The Girondin

3*B*tf*£'-J-'

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

GIFT OF

Nixon Griffis

Cornell University
Library

The original of this book is in
the Cornell University Library.

There are no known copyright restrictions in
the United States on the use of the text.

http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013585108

THE
GIRONDIN

" Girondin : a native of, or deputy from, the
Department of the Gironde, France " (Dictionary)

By HILAIRE BELLOC

^

THOMAS NELSON AND SONS

LONDON, EDINBURGH, DUBLIN

LEEDS, AND NEW YORK

LEIPZIG : 35-37 Konigstrasse. PARIS : 61, rue des Saints-Peres

First published in 1911

TO

THE HORSES

PACTE and BASILIQUE

NOW WITH THEIR FATHER JOVE

Ov p.\v yd.p ri 7rou bjtJv 6'C{i)pdmpov avSpbs
IIovtuv, ocnra re yaiav cirwrceiet rt xal Ipwei.

CONTENTS

I. In which the Girondin finishes Dinner . 7
II. In which the Girondin talks Politics . . 21

III. In which the Sovereign People play the Fool 39

IV. In which the Girondin fences too hard and

too long 59

V. In which several Lies are told in an Inn . 82
VI. In which a Postilion goes Mad . . .104
VII. In which a Sack of Charcoal is taken and

a Girl is left 122

VIII. In which a Sack of Charcoal is left and a

Girl is taken 137

IX. In which a Lover finds himself in the Dark 150
X. In which two Lovers find themselves in the

Daylight 164

XI. Showing how Men become Soldiers . .180
XII. Showing how Soldiers are not always so . 203
XIII. In which the Girondin, though by no means
yet a Soldier, becomes very certainly a Ser-
geant ; and in which a Chivalrous Fellow
strikes a Blow for the Crown . . 219

vi CONTENTS.

XIV. Showing the Advantage there is for a German,
in the Profession of Arms, that he should
know the French Tongue . . . 239
XV. In which an Ostler is too Political . . 258
XVI. In which the Brethren of Equality and Fra-
ternity are led to behave in a Manner
most Unfraternal and Inequitable; and
in which the Children of Light are un-
mercifully Bamboozled .... 268
XVII. In which an Old Gentleman shows the Way

to an Old Lady 281

XVIII. In which an Old Lady shows the Way to a

Young Gentleman . . . .291

XIX. In which it Rains 307

XX In which it goes on Raining . . .321

XXI. Valmy 332

XXII. Which shows the Disagreeables attendant

upon the Use of Amateur Drivers in the

Conduct of Artillery; especially when

they are pressed for Time . . 353

XXIII. In which the Girondin complains of the

Weather 363

THE GIRONDIN.

CHAPTER I.

In which the Girondin finishes Dinner.

TN the year 1792 and in the month of August,
in the early days of that month (to be
accurate, upon the eighth), M. Boutroux, a wine
merchant of some substance and of a singularly
settled demeanour, sat at table in the town of
Bordeaux, which was the seat of his extensive
business.

The house in which the table was served was
one of the old merchant houses overlooking the
central quays of the city ; the windows of the
room where he sat at meat (without lights, for
the hour was early and the summer sky still
bright) looked up and down stream over some
miles of the noble river which nourishes the
town.

8 THE GIRONDIN.

M. Boutroux sat at dinner. The table was of
chestnut wood ; there was no cloth upon it : it
was polished, and reflected good massive silver,
the tints of early fruits, and the glistening of
a decanter of dessert wine. At the end of the
table his wife, a little, thin woman, erect and
intensely prim, sat gingerly. The only other
person seated there was his nephew, by name
Georges, in age but twenty years, large in build,
long in leg, dressed foppishly but rather negli-
gently, and sitting in his carved chair, which
faced the windows and the cool air of the river,
more at ease and with less dignity than did
his relatives.

He was not sullen, but he was bored, and
the reason of his boredom was that M. Boutroux,
his uncle, had for now more than twenty-five
minutes very carefully detailed to him his lapses
from right conduct, and the grievous burden
that he had made himself to the household.
His brown Gascon face with its crisped and curled
black hair was half framed in his right hand
as he leaned his head upon it, listening to the
interminable harangue.

That speech had begun, as usual, with family
history. The old gentleman had sighed over the
unbusiness-like ways of the boy's dead father ;

THE GIRONDIN. 9

he had discreetly deplored the poverty of Georges'
dead mother ; he had further deplored his own
childlessness — for Georges was now his only heir.
Next he had proceeded to his regular catalogue
of the various social ranks of the town, and
had introduced into that history, by way of re-
frain, a comparison between himself, the solid
merchant, and that very vile class of young,
town nobility who, having next to nothing, and'
never working, spent continually and were for*
ever in debt — lacking probity and the proper
virtues for which the Boutroux had now since
the sixteenth century been renowned. He was
careful to mention several names which he knew
to be those of Georges' companions.

M. Boutroux the elder, stiff in a sky-blue
coat with silver buttons, gorgeous at the neck
with puffed lace, and a very handsome old man
under his plain white tie-wig (which he thought
the proper and dignified head-dress of a roturier),
was willing to admit that the extravagances of
his nephew had not yet bitten into the capital
of the family fortune. Had he thought it useful
to tell the truth (and Georges well knew it)
it had not bitten into a month of the family
income nor into a week of it. But M. Boutroux

the elder thought it necessary to enlarge. It

la

io THE GIRONDIN.

had of late become something of an amusement
with him, and the indifference of his nephew to
these remonstrances — an indifference only diver-
sified by occasional respectful epigrams — exasper-
ated him.

When he had done with the debts he turned
to a more serious matter, and with a change of
tone informed his heir that the shocking alliance
which he had heard of from others must be
at once and finally dismissed from his mind ;
to which decisive sentence, uttered now perhaps
for the fifteenth time upon as many successive
days, Madame Boutroux added a singularly de-
cisive assent.

"I require you, Georges," said his uncle in
the tone of a judge delivering sentence, "to
put the matter wholly out of your thoughts."

"I have never entertained it," said Georges,
gazing out before him upon the shipping at the
quays, and replying as he had already replied as
often as his uncle had thus spoken.

" If you have entertained it," said M. Boutroux,
senior, " dismiss it for ever from your mind."

"It has been entertained," said Georges, as
wearily as youth would permit him to speak,
"to my certain knowledge by .the young lady's
mother and brother and by her sister who keeps

THE GIRONDIN. u

the little coffee-stall near the bridge, I have
lately learned that, her confessor entertains it
also ; and from what I can make out, my dear
uncle, you entertain it more fixedly than any
of them. Though why you should do so, since
it is not to your advantage but to theirs, I can-
not for a moment conceive."

" Georges," said his aunt, "you are lacking
in respect to your uncle."

" Yes, dear aunt," said Georges, " but still more
do I lack respect and even tolerance for the sister
who keeps the coffee-stall by the bridge, the mother,
the brother, and the confessors—against whom I
have a very special grievance."

" You must not reply thus to your aunt," said
M. Boutrpux with severity.

"I would not, my uncle," said Georges in a
submissive tone, " had I not already so replied to
the brother, to the sister who keeps the coffee-stall
by the bridge, and more particularly to that very
odious man the confessor, whom I verily believe
to be in expectation of a commission upon the
settlements."

M These are not the times, Georges," said his fj
aunt, " in which to ridicule the priesthood." '

"I admit," said Georges penitently, "that it
was not very chivalrous of me, since the poor man

12 THE GIRONDIN.

has now for some weeks been hiding in a cellar
which is the property of the mother ; but you
must set against this my considerable courage in
speaking so frankly against the mother, who is no
better than she should be, the young lady who
keeps the coffee-stall, who is no better than she
can be, and above all the brother, who I am very
sorry to say is a patriot."

"We do not want you, Georges," said his
uncle, " to introduce politics into what is a purely
family matter."

" No," said Georges, " nor need they be intro-
duced if we can only keep the brother out of it.
A more ardent politician I never met ! "

After this reply there was a short silence.
Georges occupied it in watching a large pilot
cutter set out down the tide for the bar under the
evening light. He was amused to see the halyard
block jam as they put her down stream, and he
remarked to himself half aloud, so that his uncle
might hear it, that from the way the people on
board were handling the sails they appeared to be
patriots also.

"You will not," said old Monsieur Boutroux
sternly, " divert my attention from this matter by
your jests. Where is the unfortunate girl ? "

" Alas ! " said Georges with a sigh, " it is my

THE GIROND1N. 13

perpetual concern that I do not know. From the
gaiety and attractions of the place, Libourne has
often occurred to me as being the probable
sanctuary of her refuge ; or possibly Barsac, for,
young as she was, she was always a little too fond
of wine."

" You do not know her direction ? " asked his
aunt a little suspiciously.

"Not for the moment, dear aunt," answered
Georges with respect, cutting an apple upon his
plate into four quarters, and leaning over it
thoughtfully as though the task engrossed him.
"Not for the moment. . . . But, oddly enough,
she knows mine. I could wish that our responsi-
bilities were more equally divided."

Having said this he pursed his lips, compressed
them, firmly enclosed the four quarters of the
apple in the pressure of his left hand, and with a
silver knife of nice workmanship, the handle of
which terminated in a delicately chiselled faun's
head, he cut the apple transversely and let the
eight parts fall upon his plate. At these he gazed
with open and rather sad eyes as upon a ruined
world.

His uncle could bear no more. Whatever
entertainment he received from these daily excur-
sions, he would not tolerate further impertinence.

i4 THE GIRONDIN.

" You will find," he said a little grimly, rising
up stiffly from his chair and pushing it back from
him, while the family etiquette demanded that his
wife and nephew should rise at the same time,
"that this flippant habit of yours will ruin you
with men less indulgent than myself."

He took the napkin from his neck, folded it
carefully, and watched his nephew do the same,
while Madame Boutroux made the sign of the
cross discreetly upon her black silk bodice, and
having done so, smoothed her thin black hair
from her forehead upon either side of the parting
thereof. Georges was silent. He made for the
door.

" Are you going out again, Georges ? " said his
uncle threateningly.

" My dear uncle," said Georges, looking at the
ground, "yes. I am determined to settle
matters once for all with the young lady of the
coffee-stall, though I confess I dare not meet her
mother nor the clerical gentleman whom she
harbours in the cellar, which is the property of the
family."

"You know that our friends from Laborde
come this evening ? " said his aunt.

As she spoke there came up from the darkening
quays outside a sound of many feet hurrying, an

THE GIRONDIN. 15

increasing sound, as though a gathering throng
had business further on beside the river.

The foreign war, the prospect of invasion in the
distant north, the imminence of some vague but
enormous trouble in Paris — these and the rising
fever of the Revolution during the past three
years entered the minds of all three as that sound
reached them, and as the young man stood with
his hand upon the door and his aunt and uncle
watching him.

The old man called to mind his nephew's con-
nection with the localjaeohins. He had heard in
a confused way that some disreputable fellow in
connection with that trull — her brother was it ? —
spoke too often at their club ... he felt rather
than knew that the noise of the RevolutionjBas
notjanlyjsongs and_yisions but must have food to
feed it, and, that the rich would furnish the food.
He was liberal — he trusJsdJie^ was liberal. He
had no superstitions, he hoped ; he was for the
nation. He was not an old-fashioned fool : not
he ! He was for the King — if the King did his,
duty; but he rftmgmhprftH__" rarefiilly (and hadj
remembered for three years) that_he was__o£jhfi
Third Estate. In his mind, which was so clear for
businesT'"anci so confused where passions had to
be judged, he mixed up the impoverished young

1 6 THE GlRONDIN.

Jiobles, the bawling young lawyers with their scum
.of a following at the Jacobin Club, Georges' low
! amour — and Georges' going out that night. This
\ last was nearest him. On that at least he could
decide ; and he believed it connected with all
three — anarchy, the nasty acquaintance, and spend-
thrift youth.

" Georges," he said, " if you go out to-night
you will never see me again."

"Yet if I do not go, my dear uncle," said
Georges with due deference, "you will have
the advantage of my society for but a very
short time longer. Events will separate us into
various prisons ; for the brother of whom I
spoke — her brother, my dear uncle — has certain
designs."

Madame Boutroux gave a terrified look at her
husband, but he refused to meet her eyes.

"In these times," said the old man, his voice
rising, "threats of that sort are common. Men
use," he continued still louder, "young men
especially, the disasters of the State for their own
purposes. I forbid you to go."

" Madame," said Georges, turning to Madame
Boutroux, and thus addressing her by a term
unusually solemn and not common in French
families of his rank, " I do assure you that the

THE GIRONDIN. 17

Club meets to-night, ... so far as I know, the
young lady of the coffee-stall upon whom I was
jesting just now is not admitted, . . . she has
not suffered the Illumination of the Seventh
House, . . . she has presumably no acquaintance
with the Sacred Triangle, the two Pillars, or the
Thirty-third Degree, yet her brother intends to be
present. Madame, he will suggest certain action
against this house ; he has heard that you have
friends to-night."

"What are my few friends or my party to
him ? " interrupted poor Madame Boutroux.

"Madame," continued Georges quietly, "these
people have the oddest ideas about comfortable
houses. He will bring others against this house
to-night ; and it is my business," he continued
firmly and rather sadly, " to interrupt him." He
still held the handle of the door and gazed at the
ground. " I propose to do it by persuasion ; but
if that fails, then in company with two friendsj,
and with my little sword."

M. Boutroux, senior, was so incensed by the
speech thus addressed to his wife rather than to
himself— for his tall, straight nephew had turned
his back upon him to speak to his wife — that
his last answer was in a tone of constrained
passion.

1 8 THE GIRONDIN.

"Georges," he said, when the young man
had done, "if you go out you go under my
curse ; and if you return you will not be re-
admitted."

Georges weighed the matter, and made irre-
solutely as though to sit down again.

"Let him go," said Madame Boutroux, quite
white, for she feared the Jacobins.

M. Boutroux, senior, did not answer, and
Georges, without turning to meet his uncle's eye,
slipped out of the room, down the broad stone
staircase with its gilded balustrade, and when he
came to the porter's lodge at the basement asked
that the wicket in the big carved oaken doors
which gave on to the street might be slipped
open for him. Old Nicholas, the porter, who
had held him on the day of his birth, smiled at
him indulgently.

" O Master Georges, must you be out againj
along the quays on such an evening as this ?
The whole place is in a fume ! It is no time
for amusement ! "

"I'm not going to amuse myself, Nicholas,"
said the young man quizzically. "At least I'm
only going to amuse myself by interrupting the
amusements of others. Good Nicholas, I'll be
back, I hope, within two hours."

THE G1RONDIN. 19

Nicholas hesitated a moment, waiting for some
thundering interjection from the first floor — for
the whole household of domestics knew of the
quarrel between the uncle and the nephew — but
none came. He pulled the latch, and the young
man stepped out with his little toy dress-sword
at his side, in the full finery of his wealth, walk-
ing high in his dark silk and his gold chain at
the pocket and his shoe-buckles of silver ; he
went as erect as though he were on some
military errand.

The little wicket as it shut behind him seemed
to make a louder echo than he cared to hear.
He did what he had never done before on
leaving that familiar door, he stepped out into
the midst of the paved way where now in the
quieted evening no traffic ran or passers hurried :
he forgot the distant clamour of the crowd, and
looked up at the front of the house. It was
silent to him. He saw no face and no gesture
from any domestic. His people were not watch-
ing at the panes.

He sighed gently to himself and turned to the
right to reach the great and noble bridge that
spanned the very broad Garonne and formed a
sort of triumphal entry on to the crescent quays
of the city. He noted that the air was cooler,

20 THE GIRONDIN.

and also that the big clouds of a storm that
must have passed far up the valley were drifting
eastward majestically across the last light in
the sky towards the distant Dordogne and
Libourne.

CHAPTER II.

In which the Girondin talks Politics.

AT this crisis in the Revolution the bridge that
crosses the Garonne had, on the city end of
it, two large poles set one on either side of the
way ; from these long tricoloured streamers de-
pended. Passers-by had attached, in the manner
of votive offerings, coins, little handfuls of wheat,
and faded bouquets of flowers ; for the Republican
attempt — and the masses_ofriie populace were
akead^£fipxiblican„,.in feeling — was "Becoming a
religion, and was blossoming out in shrines. ,

Georges Boutroux gazed at the poles and their
offerings curiously and a little wearily. At the
foot of one, in the evening light, he saw a woman
wheeling up a gaudily painted stall upon which
were glasses and appliances for the making of
coffee and the serving of other drinks.

She was a young woman of the mountain sort,
from a hundred miles to the south, very bold and

22 THE GIRONDIN.

careless in expression, with dishevelled, handsome
hair ; her eyes were as fixed, as purposeful, and as
rapid as a sailor's. They were brown eyes, and
Boutroux, remarking them as he approached more
closely, remembered that her sister's were less
intense and perhaps a trifle more generous. He
saluted her in the gravest manner, and she
treated him in return much as a bargainer in
the market treats a man whom he could quarrel
with but hopes before quarrelling to make a
profit upon.

"If you are coming to ask me a question,
M. Georges," she said, "I shall not answer it
you." As she said this, however, she smiled in
a forced but ready manner.

"That," said Georges Boutroux gravely, "will
depend upon the question. I want to ask where
I may find your brother."

" Oh, my brother ! " said the mountain lady with
something like humour in her fixed eyes, which
were set far apart in her head, and were strong in
aspect. " All the world knows where my brother
will be to-night."

"Yes," said Georges gently, "and I shall be
there too, but I want to know where I may first
find him."

"Really, M. Georges," she said with the

THE GIRONDIN. 23

mercantile laugh which hundreds heard every day
as they came to the little barrow to drink at
evening, "you seem now as you seemed before,
more intent upon the conversation of his ladies
than on finding him. If he were really angry with
you," she added a little menacingly, " you would
soon find out where he is." And as she said this
her eyes glanced at a spot somewhat to his own
right.

He turned sharply round and saw the young
man whom he was seeking.

The lady's brother was a curious figure. In
quieter times one would have said that he had
dressed up for the occasion or was on his way to
a pageant ; but in moments of violent civil tumult ^
and of foreign war, when the State is invaded, and
the most intense of political passions are in peril
of final defeat, much may be excused.

He wore his own hair, not because he had been1
born a pauper (for recent political advancement
had given him several francs a day), but because
it seemed to him Republican to do so. In his
right hand he carried carelessly — as a man to-day
carries a pair of gloves — a bright red worsted cap
imported from England, and of the sort that was
then worn in England by brewers' journeymen,
but was used in Bordeaux at that moment for a

24 THE GIROND1N.

cap of Liberty. Round his neck was hung, as one
might hang a locket, a large leaden token upon a
leathern string. This token was stamped in
strong relief with a triangle, wherein was further
stamped the figure of a seated woman. This figure
represented Liberty, and it was holding in one hand
an axe and in the other a sheaf of corn. His
great cloth coat was open at the throat and showed
some inches of his hairy chest ; the cuffs of it
were turned up as though he had but recently left
work, though as a fact he had hardly worked with
his hands in the whole of his young life, and had
not even pretended to do so since the time of
the last National Federation which he had attended
the year before in Paris. He was browner than
Georges, shorter, but quite as Gascon. His hair
also was black, his eyes resolute and determined,
and his carriage betrayed that exceptional and
virile courage which we associate with the valley
of the Gironde — a military race. He wore knee-
breeches of common stuff; his calves and shins
were, by a curious affectation, bare. Over his feet
he had drawn a pair of military boots, and he
was foolish enough to carry girt on to him, by
way of parade, a great curved light cavalry sword,
■to which indeed he had a sort of right; for he
(was one of those irregular bodies of volunteers

THE GIRONDIN. 25

which the anarchic politics of the time toleratedl/
and even sanctioned. /

This personage — Henri Sorrel by name, or at
least by baptism, but latterly Aristogeiton by
democratic adoption, and yet more lately, by a
change of judgment, Miltiades — looked at Georges
Boutroux without anger but with considerable
valour. He asked him what he wanted, calling
him "Georges" and using the familiar thou of
the French, in a manner which, only two years
before, would have seemed to a young man of
the wealthier classes of the city, coming from
such a person, like a blow in the face.

Georges saluted with an excessive courtesy, and
" thouing " in return, and giving his companion
his Greek name with a sonorous accent, said that
he wanted nothing more than to accompany him,
and to speak with him, as they both walked
towards the meeting of the Section — to the Club.

The plebeian was willing enough, and they
went off. As they went, the sister at the coffee-
stall called after them with the loud, harsh, and
shrill cry that women of the people use.
Miltiades looked over his shoulder towards her,
but Georges at that moment pulled at his dirty
sleeve, so that he turned round again and did
not hear. She had wished to warn him.

26 THE GIRONDIN.

"Miltiades," said Georges Boutroux gravely,
"do you know I nearly called you Aristogeiton ?
It used to be your name."

"I changed it," said Miltiades nervously, and
a little sullenly — they were many together in the
body that had turned towards the Club, and he
did not wish to be made ridiculous. " I changed
it."

" But why ? " said Boutroux innocently.

"Well, it began with," Aristo-Miltiades was
answering, when Georges interrupted him with
reserved sympathy. " Of course," he said ; " I
see."

As the two young men went through the
streets towards the meeting-place, others and
others again joined them, as disparate as could be.

A little shuffling old gentleman of the local
nobility came up last of all ; he never by any
chance met Georges without linking an arm in
his and borrowing a little silver — and so he did
to-night.

Two big stevedores from the docks were with
him, silly and good-natured, delighted (but a
little shy) to be mixing with the wealthy. One
of them dug the aged noble in the ribs and hurt
him. A pale young Jew who sold books and
had keen, rather furtive, and very rapidly moving

THE GIRONDIN. 27

eyes joined in ; he was a man who really expected
something of the new world, and something apoca-
lyptical, unnatural, and to his own advantage. He
was full of things lurid and dramatic, but he
was not sure the war would not be dangerous.
A broken lawyer on the make was there also, with
a fixed face and a determination to become a
master of men — a thing which in his thirty-two
most unsuccessful years he had not yet become.
A grave young officer of guns was with them too,
proud and somewhat sullen. They were a group
of nearly a hundred when they reached the
hall.

At the door there was no password ; for though
they were all of the Brethren, the meeting was not
secret. The Sections were duly constituted ; this
was a meeting of the Section, and any citizen might
come in. Yet several chose to give a password,
flauntingly enough, to a little haggard man that
stood at the door, for all the world like a man
taking tickets at an entertainment ; and apparently
the password that night was " The Human
Race."

Boutrbux, as he passed in, put his hand for a
moment on the shoulder of the little haggard
man, who looked scared as he did so, and said,
" Is the password to-night c The Human Race ' ? "

28 THE GIRONDIN.

"Yes — there is no password — certainly," said
the little man, startled out of all knowledge.

" I'm glad to hear it," said Boutroux. "I thought
it might be ' equality ' or ( brotherhood ' or some-
thing of that sort. I get mixed." He looked
the little haggard man deeply in the eyes. " The
human race," he said, "and be damned to it.
But bear it in mind. We both belong to it."
And with that he went in.

Several of the group looked at him suspiciously,
but he turned to the one who seemed the most
intelligent (and also the most suspicious) and said,
" Believe me, gentlemen ; it is profoundly true."
He went in and took his place on a rough bench
beside the others.

The room was long, low, and narrow : it had
served in turn for a small wine-market, for a
dancing-hall, and for a place of public meeting.
It had latterly been acquired by the city for the
regular meeting of this Section. Five dirty oil
lamps hung from the apex of its ridgeboard,
above the gangway that separated the seats upon
either side ; and they swung but little higher than
a man's head. Some three hundred men were
present, of whom perhaps half a dozen were a
little drunk ; the rest were sober. Half of the
audience were smoking tobacco in pipes, as was

THE GIRONDIN. 29

the custom of the populace. One or two of the
wealthier people took snuff from time to time.
On the platform at the end six solemn men
were grouped : three in the careful dress of the
middle class, one military and singularly dishev-
elled, one a constitutional priest — a country
parish priest with a heavy, careless look — the last
a tall, fine fanatical figure whose glance and gesture
immediately arrested the eye, for they seemed to
carry the whole spirit of the Revolution.

This last one rose, struck the table with
a hammer, and asked for the minutes of the
last meeting. The old and decrepit noble at
Boutroux's side protested. It was a meeting of
the Section, he urged, not of the Jacobin Club.
He was there as a member of the Section, not
of the Club.

Grumblings began to arise ; several citizens cast
doubts upon the interrupter's private morals, while
one deep-voiced man in his immediate neighbour-
hood compared him successively to a number of
insignificant animals. Boutroux pulled the old
noble down sharply by the tail of his laced coat ;
he tore it, and then, to apologise for an unworthy
action, whispered in his ear with something of the
license that is permitted to a creditor.

"I am here for something really important,

3o THE GIROND1N.

M. de Riserac. You will do me a favour by
not angering them."

The old man's interruption was neglected.
Every man there was of the Club, and the
meeting soon proved itself not a gathering of
the Section nor a debate between electors, but
a strict meeting of that organisation which within
two days was to raise Paris in arms, to storm
the palace, and conquer the executive power
throughout the whole country.

The minutes were read briefly, passed by a
show of hands only interrupted by a drunken
man who tried to speak and failed and was
treated by the President to a short lecture on the
civic virtue of sobriety. Then without speeches
and without delay the bureau upon the platform
proceeded to business, and the first item read
was a list ; it was a list of " men to respond
to the call in case of necessity." Name after
name was droned out, and approved. Nearly
every name was known either by its attachment
to the new revolutionary militia forces or the
public rhetoric of the town, or by a recommen-
dation from the mother society in Paris. The
list was approved in its entirety, and every man
present knew who could be depended upon
when — for every man now knew that fighting

THE GIRONDIN. 31

was not far off — the people might be called upon
to rise.

""When that was over, speeches were made,
simple and violent enough. They concluded
with a short and very fine piece of measured
prose which that presiding fanatic had prepared
— and worthily prepared.

As he spoke the audience saw the invaders
already upon the march, the treason of the King
and of the Executive Government, the garrisoning
of the palace, and the necessity for national action
and for the destruction of all that impeded it.
The careful, classical sentences suited the long
tradition of those minds. The rhythm of those
phrases sobered the drunkards : they filled the
rest with that cold enthusiasm which, in the
Latin tradition, is the precursor both of heroic
deeds and of crimes.

The President's speech over, there succeeded
short violent interjections rather than harangues,
each raising the heat of the gathering in some
degree until at last emotion was exhausted, and
at a signal from the chair the evening ended.

Miltiades rose in his place. "I have urgent
news before we separate," he cried, and he
looked at Georges sideways, but Georges sat
tight.

32 THE GIRONDIN.

" Is it information for the Executive ? " asked
the President.

" Yes, information of a plot."

As Miltiades shouted the word, many stopped
on their way out, and several turned as though
to stay.

The President called to them all in his clear
tones, " The sitting is over, citizens ; there is
no need for any to remain save the Executive.
We shall do our duty."

At this they moved outward again, but slowly,
towards the door.

It was about half-past nine o'clock. The room
had emptied.

Boutroux put his hand a little heavily upon
Miltiades' shoulder, shook off the aged noble who
tried to cling to him, and said to the plebeian, —

" Miltiades, I will come up to the table with
you and help you. I may be of use."

The plebeian was not without sentiment. He
had always thought it hard to hide from Boutroux
where his sister might for the moment be : he felt
himself under a sort of obligation mixed, as it
must always be with men of peasant blood, with
the hope of future gain. Anyhow he felt awk-
ward to have Boutroux there.

"It's secret," he muttered; "you can't help."

THE GIRONDIN. 33

" Who knows ? " replied Georges pensively ; " a
friend is always useful. For instance, you might
be wrong and so get suspected. ... I had better
come."

They went up to the table together. The men
on the platform were engaged upon another list
in a smaller book ; it was closed rapidly over the
finger of the President as they approached.

" What have you to say, Citizen ? " he asked sol-
emnly of Miltiades, ignoring Georges altogether.

Mikiades mumbled a few words sullenly.

" We know the house," answered the President ;
" we have marked it."

Here Boutroux intervened.

"I ought to know against whom action may
be taken," he said, " if action becomes necessary."

"Action will be necessary," said the President,
speaking fixedly like a statue.

"Yes," answered Boutroux as easily as ever,
"and we must all know against whom it will
be taken, or there will be confusion." Then as
though he were mentioning a taste in wine, he
added, "I have several reasons for saying that
I would much rather it were not taken, among
other places, against my uncle's house. For
instance, I live there."

The President, looking at him with a complete

34 THE GIRONDIN.

sincerity, said, "If I call on you, Citizen, you
must do your duty."

"Certainly, Citizen," said Boutroux ritually.
(He had made young ladies laugh often enough
at the absurd term " Citizen ; " he had a killing
trick of using it suddenly in drawing-rooms.)

"Citizen, no just man will suffer," the Presi-
dent intoned, "and the property of all, just or
unjust, will be spared by the majesty of the
People."

"That is it," said Boutroux gently, smiling
at that member of the six directors who seemed
to him the coarsest and most human. " I took
the trouble of coming up here, before getting
into the much fresher air outside, to tell you
that my uncle is among the just, and that it will
be singularly convenient to me if his property
should be quite particularly secure in trusting
to the majesty of the People."

Miltiades looked awkward for a moment, and
Boutroux waited for his answer.

" No one threatens your uncle," said the fanatic
President gravely, but he was imprudent enough
to add, " Wealth is indifferent to the high indig-
nation of the people ; but if traitors. . . ."

" You have furnished me with the very word,"
interrupted Boutroux. " The very word ! I had

THE GIRONDIN. 35

it on the tip of my tongue, and now you remind
me of it ! President, the whole point is, that
my uncle does not happen to be a traitor ; it is
a most important point both to him and to the
jusdy indignant populace. It is a major point ;
on such a night as this a really capital point,"
and Boutroux shot a glance at the coarse man
in whom he hoped to find an ally.

The coarse man, who was also good-humoured
and loose, burst into a loud guffaw. " Citizen ! "
said he, "Citizen ! I verily believe you are a Gaul ! "

The Cure, who had been to school thirty years
before, took a pinch of snuff" and said "Attic
salt," twice, but no one understood him nor
cared for what he said. The coarse man sud-
denly began to laugh and could not cease from
laughing ; he laughed until the tears came into
his eyes. The fanatic was indignant, but the
virility of the coarse man conquered.

"Citizen Boutroux," he coughed between his
gasps, " you will be the death of me ! Ho !
you will be the death of me ! 1 like you as
much in a revolution as I did in the wine-
cellars before revolutions were dreamed of, and
when you were a silly lad of seventeen. Lord !
boy, patriotism can go bail and give security
like anything else ! "

36 THE GIRONDIN.

"Exactly," said Boutroux. "The shame and
the disgrace that I should feel if my family
should prove in any way lacking to the popular
cause would make me forget a paltry loss of
cash. Still, since we are speaking of cash " — he
looked round him — " I am willing to call it a
thousand. Will the Section accept such a
guarantee ? Shall I sign ? "

"We are better without signatures," said the
President calmly, "and there is no price for treason."

" Precisely," said Boutroux. " I wanted to add
that at the first hint of treason — nay, of cooling
enthusiasm — escheat the money. But there is
something I should warn you against. My
uncle sometimes suffers from delusions, and
when he is not himself he talks at random.
Would you only remember that on the guar-
antee of yet another thousand 1 guarantee him —
if he say anything uncivic — to be suffering from
delusions ? "

" Do you warrant his words ? " said the
President, turning to Miltiades.

"I've given true information," grumbled the
man. "I might have shown favour, and I did
not." He wished that thousand had come his
way ; he suspected that if he held firm another
sum might find its way to him.

THE GIRONDIN. 37

" A thousand livres," said the President, fall-
ing into the old vocabulary and talking stiffly,
" is but the wages of an honest labouring citizen
for one year ; and to men like you," he added
sternly to Boutroux, " it is but the price of a
debauch — and Liberty is not to be bought, nor
is the Nation. Nevertheless we will accept your
guarantee."

"Especially about the delusions," said the fat
man who kept the wine-cellar, laughing again
uproariously.

"Yes," answered Boutroux quietly, "that is
the point I most particularly wish to make.
My uncle sometimes puts things in such an
exasperating way ! " And he sighed. " But I
am guaranteeing in that amount that he means
well. And here," said he, suddenly pulling out
a bunch of dirty notes, " is half of it. And the
other half," he said, sighing again as though he
were intolerably bored, "on the day after you
may have had occasion to visit him."

The President locked the money into a metal
box, wherein he also put a minute of the name
and time. Then they went out all in company.

Miltiades, walking beside Boutroux, looked
at him now and again in the darkness with
curiosity, with fear, and with some respect.

38 THE G1RONDIN.

" I had to do my duty," he said. . . .

Boutroux did not answer, but strode on.

" I had to do my duty," said Miltiades again ;
there was swagger in his tone, and at the same
time a hint of bargaining. "My sister . . ."
he continued.

"There now," caught up Boutroux pleasantly,
"that fatal topic. . . ! Do you know, Aristo-
geiton — Miltiades, I mean — if there is one sub-
ject on which my uncle and you might differ
(should you do him the honour to visit him
with the deputation) ..."

"You are your own master, and it's all in
your own hands," answered Miltiades savagely.
"Your house and your uncle and all he has . . .
you may keep it or lose it."

" Precisely," answered Georges.

CHAPTER III.

In which the Sovereign People play the Fool.

"tj^OR the next few minutes they strode side
by side in silence, the others at their heels.

The street upon that August night was oppres-
sive with a heavier air than Boutroux had expected
upon leaving that closed, packed, and heated
lamp -lit hall. A complete stillness presaged
thunder, and one could just see to the north-
ward, above the broad river, high banks of cloud
making a black emptiness against the few stars
of the zenith.

They all went on together through another
hundred yards of narrow ways, to where an old
arch spanned a lane — on the way to the broad
quays ; there the little group would disperse, but on
their way it was their business to cross through
the courtyard of an inn which, in the labyrinth
of the old town, the thoroughfare skirted from
one arched house to another, and the courtyard

4o THE GIRONDIN.

was a rectangle of uneven pavement lying to
one side of the kennel. As they came to this
through the tunnel of the arch, they heard voices
and movement in the recessed courtyard beyond :
they saw the glare of great lamps contrasting
with the tiny glimmer of the oil lantern which
the Corporation maintained slung above that open
way, and Boutroux heard Miltiades call over
his shoulder to his companions that it must be
the Paris courier with news.

Two or three score men, not more, of every
age and dress, were gathered in a little group
round the high carriage with its tarpaulin already
cast over it and its stack of unlowered luggage
strapped upon the roof. The shafts were leaning
upright and back against the body of the vehicle,
for the horses had been taken out of it. Up
on the box-seat, holding a carriage lamp close
to a printed sheet, stood one of the postilions
familiar to the little crowd under the name of
Arnan, and they encouraged him to read with
jests and occasional applause.

The head ostler came out in the midst of this
as the men from the Section joined the rest,
Boutroux and Miltiades with them ; he called to
the postilion angrily to come down, and received
for his pains a mixed volley from the crowd :

THE GIRONDIN. 41

some asking him why he was not in Conde's
army, some why he was not with the Prussians,
some bidding him go and garrison the King's
Palace in Paris. The man was old, grim-faced,
and brave ; he answered, as though he were a
crowd himself instead of one man against so
many, that rather than be a traitor to his King
he would drown himself in the Gironde.

A large fat boy standing near him said : " Perhaps
you will be saved the trouble." The ostler threw
him to the ground. There was the beginning
of a scuffle, when the high voice of the postilion,
continuing to read, withdrew the rioters from
the beginning of their riot, and the old ostler,
muttering a native curse and signing the cross
upon himself, went back into the darkness of
his stables until it should please his subordinate
to finish his patriotic work.

The postilion continued to read : " There were

rumours ; the invaders were upon the march ;

they had not -crossed the frontier ; La Fayette

had certainly betrayed the State." .... At

the mere name of La Fayette a dozen of them

booed so loudly that the renewed assertion of

that man's betrayal was lost in the noise. The

postilion held up his hand and continued to read : —

"It is certain that the Erecutive power will
2a

42 THE GIRONDIN.

arm the Tuileries. His guard of foreign mer-
cenaries has already received orders to march
from Rueil ; several of the Sections in Paris
have taken Austrian gold and have betrayed
the State and are marching to aid the King."

At this point in the postilion's reading a very
large foolish man, with a face inordinately red,
said thickly : " That is a lie ! "

The postilion showed some pride of bearing.
" Gentlemen," he said, " the citizen is drunk ! "

" That is quite true," said the citizen in question,
" and also you are a liar."

Two of his neighbours fell upon the interrupter
and began to hit him rather gently with their
fists, saying, " Hold your tongue, fool ; we want
to hear the news."

He was drunkenly gentle with them in turn,
but continued to mutter : " It is a lie ! All the
Sections are loyal to the Revolution." Then he
added a little inconsequently, " and the King
is a pig ! " But he did not interrupt again.

The postilion continued his reading : "The
volunteers enlisted already number eleven thou-
sand. The Federals from Marseilles rival in zeal
for Liberty the Federals from Bordeaux." . . .
This sentence he had made up, and it sounded
well. There were murmurs of approval. "It

THE GIRONDIN. 43

is the general opinion," read on the postilion
sententiously, "of those best informed in the
capital, that events cannot be long delayed."

" You hear that ? " said Miltiades, in a feverish
whisper to Boutroux, as the postilion went on
with his news.

"I do," said Boutroux gravely, smiling to
himself in the darkness and watching calmly
the mobile, uncontrolled face of the postilion
as the light of the carriage lamp picked it out
against the darkness. "It is very pregnant.
Events ! If that were all, it would be no great
matter ; but the devil of it is," he added thought-
fully and as though weighing his words, "the
devil of it is they will not be long delayed."

All this while the crowd was increasing. Young
lads had run from its outskirts to summon new-
comers, until the throng had grown to be many
hundreds strong, and filled up the whole of the
courtyard, making a packed and rather ill-tempered
mass in its darker corners. These late comers
only heard the last words — they were a pro-
clamation that the "country was in danger,"
and an appeal to the revolutionary party for
volunteers.

The night with all, and wine with many, had
led to exaltation, when — at that most ill-timed

44 THE GIRONDIN.

occasion — a great gilt coach, lumbering, drawn
by four fat horses, the two near mounts ridden
by postilions in antiquated livery, tried to force
its way from the one arch to the other along
the thoroughfare. The crowd was too dense,
for its passage, and a rumour rose about it.
The rumour grew to a loud quarrel ; a bare-
armed blacksmith in his leathern apron tore at
the hinged door until it gave way. A moment
more and the two postilions were dragged from
their saddles, there were cries, and after the cries
blows.

The interest of the mob turned from the
reader of the dispatch on the box-seat of the
diligence to this new adventure. Some said it
was the Mayor, others mentioned the name of
an unpopular squire who had stuck out for the
old wages in the vineyards. Others of simpler
mind said that any one travelling in such a
splendid coach must necessarily be an Austrian

spy-
Meanwhile, within the coach, women's voices

shrilly protested against the indignity and the

danger ; and Boutroux, edging through the crowd,

observed (and sighed as he observed them) two

friends of his aunt's, decayed gentry of Laborde,

down river, whom she affected for their noble

THE GIRONDIN. 45

name. They must have come that moment
from his uncle's house, and Georges smelt danger.

Round the coach one of those spontaneous'
committees which the Revolution had the genius
to form at a moment's notice was already chosen ^
its leader was naturally the man who had pre-
sided at the meeting of the Section from which
they had all just come.

The two ladies were on foot at the step of
their carriage, still protesting in a torrent of
complaint : he was gravely putting questions in
the manner of a judge, deciding what the proper
action of The People should be, and he was re-
iterating with quiet insistence, —

"We must know, ladies, otherwise how can
we form a reasoned judgment ? "

Since they would not answer, but continually
threatened and implored by turns, the evidence
of one of the riders was taken ; and to the formal
question whence they had come and whither they
were going, this man answered that they had
come from a social evening at the house of M.
Boutroux, the merchant, and as for their destina-
tion, it was no further than the Hotel of the
Shield, in that same city.

The President gravely told them that that
was enough, and that it would have saved much

46 THE GIRONDIN.

trouble had answers been given earlier. He
named two men who happened to be roughly
armed, one with a sort of crowbar, the other
with an old sword, and told them off to hold
the horses' bridles and to lead them to that hotel,
so that there should be no misunderstanding.

The coach thus escorted went off, pitifully
enough, the packed crowd pressing upon itself
with a sort of spontaneous discipline to make
way for the vehicle ; the door of the carriage
with its dingy coat of arms, torn off its hinges,
lay smashed upon the ground ; a man lifted a
painted portion of it and denounced the sign of
nobility ; the old ladies re-entered their gaping
vehicle, and with such dignity as they could
command resumed their way.

When they had passed and the crowd had
closed again behind them, it was as Boutroux
feared : the President, stepping up on to the
three stones which served as a mount to the
inn, very gravely announced to the mob that
there had plainly been held — or was perhaps
still holding — a meeting at the house of Citizen
Boutroux, a man suspected by some and marked
for a deputation ; that it was the duty of all
patriots to see whether the local Austrian Com-
mittee had not held one of its political meetings

THE GIRONDIN. 47

there that night. He said he would not dwell
upon the armorials of the carriage, nor upon the
unusual hour of its appearance, nor upon the
insolence displayed by the occupants of it to-
wards the people. He begged them, in their
approaching visit to the Boutroux town-house,
to respect the rights of a Citizen, but at the
same time to remember those of the State and
of the Revolution.

For five minutes more he indulged in the
rhetoric proper to the time, and when he got
down from his eminence the thousand or so
that had now gathered in that small space were
already marshalled for an attack. A woman of
the market-place who had stopped casually upon
her way home to see why so many had been
drawn together, thought it proper to strike up
the new hymn of the Marseilles men, which,
three weeks before, had reached the city. And
the whole company of them took in a lurching
way the shortest line for the quays and the
wealthy houses — and with them went Georges
Boutroux, cursing their betrayal, heartily wishing
his money back in his pocket, communing with
himself and deciding that the best plan in a critical
moment was to have no plan.

As he went, Miltiades, who still stuck close

48 THE GIRONDIN.

to him, nudged him maliciously in the ribs and
said : "You will do your duty, Citizen ?"

"Certainly, Citizen," said Boutroux gravely.
"It is the only trade I know." He made it
his business, as they went through the narrow
paved lanes between the tall old houses, to edge
a little to the left on the outer side of the
throng. At last, just as the head of the noisy
procession debouched upon the quays, he got
his opportunity.

He lurched away from Miltiades' side into the
shadow of a small alley, swiftly ran down it,
doubled through a yet narrower courtyard that
ran at right angles, and continuing his pace and
knowing every inch of the surroundings, came
out by the broad riverside at the very corner of
his uncle's house. He stood near the door of it
and saw the company which he had just left
approach, swirling and singing, up the quays.
He stood where he hoped to be unnoticed, in the
corner of the heavy carven porch ; the lamp hung
from its gilded and delicate metal ornament above
his uncle's doorway, throwing a complete and
blinding shadow over the spot where he hid.
There was yet another coach standing ready at
the door : the last guests entering it were making
their profuse farewells and handing their vales to

THE GIRONDIN. 49

the porter and his wife. The mob was approach-
ing rapidly, and Boutroux dared not step out into
the light to warn the household lest the first rank
of the rioters should note his action and burst in.
The great oaken doors were clapped to just in
time, the postilions cracked their whips, the coach
rattled off swiftly northward along the river. A
few larrikins pursued it, barefooted, shouting
insults, but there was nothing worse. The mass
of the mob as it arrived swarmed round; the lodge
window and clamoured for the master of the house
and for his remaining guests.

Georges still lay hid, and watched them. He
knew his uncle's temper ; he knew also, what his
uncle did not, the temper of these men ; and he
knew that his moment had not yet come.

For some moments the confused noise of the
crowd, the song from Marseilles which the heavy
market woman continued singing too loudly, too
high, and too flat (though many begged her to
be silent), the disputes of several as to what
should be done, were all at last quieted, and the
President stepped out of the half circle of their
front in a manner somewhat theatrical but not
undignified ; he knocked heavily at the door.

Through a tiny iron grating, perhaps six inches
square, which was worked in the wicket of that

50 THE GIRONDIN.

massive oak, Nicholas the porter asked what
they wanted.

Georges Boutroux, hiding there round the corner
of the porch, his nerves all at tension in the
shadow, had an odd feeling of familiarity and of
home ; he knew that voice so well ! He had
known it every hour of his life up to this last
hour, and to hear it under such a circumstance
seemed so like the odd and inexplicable grotesque
of a dream !

A man in the mob shouted out : " We want
to get in ! "

The President, more courteously, and in a low
tone, reassured the servant. "Believe me," he
said, "no such uncivic act is intended." Then
in his clear chiselled voice, which could be heard,
and which he intended to be heard, by all the
nearest of his followers, he added : " We desire
to know in the name of The People who is in
this house and what their business may be."

The porter said he would convey the gentle-
man's message to his master. He snapped the
shutter behind the little grating, and for perhaps
two minutes the mob amused itself by most un-
civic threats to burn down the house, and by
other less congruous proposals, half of which
were directed against the personal appearance of

THE GlRONDIN. $t

its master, and half against that exceedingly un-
popular character, the King of France and of
Navarre. The intempestive market woman had
again begun her loud Marseillian song — and
(from the honour borne to her sex) no one of
the Sovereign People had yet clapped his hand
upon her mouth — when a hush fell even upon
her at the sound of windows opening, the grind-
ing of the iron fastening that held them, and the
sight of M. Boutroux the merchant, coming out
into the summer night and standing upon his own
balcony, looking down upon the angry crowd.

I should be doing M. Boutroux, senior, a
wrong were I to deny that he felt the dignity of
the situation : he was a single figure, the lights
were behind him, he was on a fine isolated
balcony ; the Sovereign People were below. He
had read of such situations.

The fine and nicely poised figure of the old
man, its careful black silk dress, the more par-
ticular for such an occasion of ceremony as that
which he had just concluded, his obvious courage,
and perhaps the secret pleasure he took in so
dramatic an occasion, moved his fellow country-
men below ; and a lad who threw a tomato at him
and missed, was for this act cuffed about the head
by his attendant father until he wept with pain

52 THE GIRONDIN.

and mortification — but he should have known the
value of the unities in all affairs of the stage.

M. Boutroux, senior, spoke.

"I desire first," said he in Very clear and precise
tones, which unpleasantly reminded some of the
audience of the tones of a magistrate upon the
bench — "I desire to know, first, who is your
spokesman and under whose order you are
acting."

Above the confused noise of many the Pre-
sident, who knew his place, at once replied, and
was at once heard, —

"There is no time for a vote, Citizen Bou-
troux, and I speak for those present and for the
Section."

M. Boutroux, senior, looked at them for a
moment in the calm dignity of his sixty-eight
years and without replying. " I take it," said he
solidly, "you are the Section."

Upon which reply the political lady from the
market once more began her interpretation of the
Marseillaise ; but this time the respect borne to her
sex was of no avail, and an onion dealer put his
hand over her mouth so that no sound came from
it but a sort of low moaning, and after that two
gasps.

" You are the Section," said M. Boutroux again,

THE GIRONDIN. 53

as though upon reflection. "Then I must cer-
tainly reply to your constituted authority."

There was no irony in his tone, and, though his
mouth was set, there was none apparent in his
expression either. This last, indeed, they could
but dimly discern, for the light that singled him
out in that conspicuous position shone from the
room within.

"May I first ask what the Section requires of
me?" '

" We wish to know," said the President, stand-
ing and looking upward in a manner that he felt
to be a little undignified and somewhat at a strain,
" who is meeting in your house to-night, and for
what purpose ? "

"The answer is simple enough," said M.
Boutroux with grave courtesy, and in a loud
voice that rang over all the crowd. "There are
present in my house to-night, and at this moment,
myself, my wife, my six domestics, my porter,
and his wife."

" Others have been here," said the President, a
little menacingly.

" You are quite right," answered M. Boutroux
imperturbably, and still in the manner of the quiet
orator ; " there have been in numbers, if I recollect
aright, seventeen. In quality, five families of the

54 THE GIRONDIN.

neighbourhood, my friends. We have drunk
lemonade and eaten fruit, and we have listened
to a little music."

"We shall require their names," said the Presi-
dent, conscious that this dialogue was becoming
ridiculous.

"The names shall be furnished you at once,"
said M. Boutroux ; " a list shall be given to my
porter and shall be handed to you. Have you
anything further to ask ? "

/ The President was in a quandary. He had
/nothing further to ask, but the mob had some-
thing further to do. The President was a leader
of democracies, and he managed the thing well.
He stepped back a few paces so as not to crane
his neck ridiculously, as he had been doing; he
turned a little so that he seemed to be addressing
the crowd as well as this most unpopular and
wealthy man, and then said with due solemnity,
but in a loud and vigorous tone, —

"When we have received your report, Citizen
Boutroux, we shall take the document (I beg
you to execute it upon stamped paper) back to
the Section — which 1 may tell you sits perma-
nently to-night after the news from Paris— and
we shall there debate upon your evidence. I
think we are agreed ? " said the President to the

THE GIRONDIN. 55

Sovereign People, some of whom made a shuffling
noise with their feet, most of whom were silent,
and one only of whom, the political lady, shouted
a wild approbation, adding the epithet "Pig,"
addressed to whatever in her mind stood for
those social forces which did not meet with her
approval.

There was a silence as though the Sovereign
People were ruminating upon the wisdom of the
lady's judgment. Then the President continued,
in a manner matter of fact and absolute, —

"We shall leave guards at your door, and to-
morrow, at our convenience, we will summon
you for further examination. We hope you will
be agreeable."

"You are very good," said M. Boutroux,
senior ; " my action will depend upon the cir-
cumstances that may arise." Then raising his
voice a little, he said: "Citizens of the Section
and your Mr. President, I wish you a very
good night." He stepped back briskly, turned
the iron catch of the tall windows, pulled the
curtain across them, and so signified that the
political interview was at an end. A large stone
came crashing through a pane, and Madame
Boutroux within that room, paling with fear as
she did with every emotion, jumped.

$6 THE GIRONDIN.

"It is nothing," said M. Boutroux, raising his
hand in a majestic calm. "These things are
inevitable in revolutions."

There was no further demonstration. Indeed,
had Madame Boutroux known it, she would
have been pleased to see that the boy who
threw the stone was reproved for his lack of
civic sense by the President on the quays with-
out ; though that boy was little to blame, for he
was but thirteen years old, and loved to throw
a stone.

The noise of their feet was heard tramping
off down the quays towards the bridge. There
came a rhythm into that tramp, and a deep,
robust voice started a marching song.

M. Boutroux, senior, meanwhile rang a little
copper bell upon the table, and one of his ser-
vants appeared. He ordered writing materials
and sand, and began deliberately to make out his
list of those who had been present that evening
at his little party.

Madame Boutroux, with fixed, angry lips and
folded hands, watched him, and would neither
interfere nor help. Once when a name escaped
him, he asked her for it. She told him with a
thin majesty that she would have nothing to do
with it, and went upstairs to pray at her little

THE GIRONDIN. 57

chair. She prayed for the saintly Madame Elisa-
beth, for the Queen and the Royal Family, for
the Bishop and the Clergy, the Pope, the Altar
and the Throne, and she found in her book a
special prayer for Times of Tumult, which she
was careful to recite both in the French and in
the Latin, for it had a virtue of its own.

As for her husband, he sat up quite half an
hour longer, adding to the list of names a careful
annotation showing how each possessor of such
a name was legally entitled to travel, had taken
no part in any movement offensive to the Depart-
ment, to the Sections, to the Municipality, to the
Assembly, or to the Crown. And this was not
difficult, for, of all his guests, one only had been
a male under the age of forty, and he was a very
simple young man engaged in the commerce of
wine, and chiefly occupied in learning the English
tongue.

When M. Boutroux had completed his list and
his annotation thereupon, he wrote at the bottom a
formal sentence of protest against the interruption
of his evening, a claim upon certain constituted
authorities against the Section, his adherence to
the constituted power of the Section, and then he
signed the whole, sloping uphill from left to
right in a firm, delicate handwriting, " Boutroux,"

58 THE GIRONDIN.

and added his civic qualifications, his academic
degrees, and the rest. This done, he sanded the
whole over carefully, folded it into a neat cachet,
and went down himself to the echoing basement
porch, where he found Nicholas the porter very-
much perturbed, but very sleepy.

"Give this," he said, "through the grating —
do not open the wicket — to whoever remains
outside for its reception. Then go to bed. And,
Nicholas," he added severely, "admit no one at
all. Above all, you shall not admit my unhappy
nephew, who is the author of all our troubles."

His face sterner than it had yet been during
the excitement of this passage, the old man
turned, erect and almost vivacious, neglecting the
good-night which for so many years he had
invariably extended to his dependants, and went
firmly up the stairs.

When he reached his room he did not undress.
He saw the light in his wife's oratory : it filled
him with contempt ; he locked his door, lay
down (dressed as he was in his gala clothes)
upon his curtained bed, lit a candle, and set
himself to pass the few hours of darkness, until
the danger might be renewed, in reading his
favourite story from Voltaire, which was "The
Huron."

CHAPTER IV.

In which the Girondin fences too hard
and too long.

"IV/rEANWHILE, in his dark corner, hidden
outside the doors of the house, Georges
Boutroux had listened to all that his uncle had
said, and to all that the President had replied, and
throughout the scene had remained so hidden.

He did not disclose himself when the President
chose two men out of the thousand or so present
to mount guard before those doors during the
night, and he waited with crossed arms in his
dark corner until the mob with its noise and its
occasional cheering, and its songs and its growing
rhythm and military tramp, had disappeared into
the night.

When they were quite lost, and the sound of
them no longer reached him, he strolled along
the neighbouring houses, crossed the broad quay
to the riverside, leant against the stone parapet

60 THE GIRONDIN.

there overhanging the water, and with his hands
in his pockets watched the blank window panes.

He thought it must be midnight. He had
heard a chime a few moments before ; but whether
it were the half-hour or the three-quarters he
could not recall. All the casements of the house
were dark. There was not even a ray shining
outward from the usual watch-lamp in the porter's
room in the ground floor to the side of the door,
so closely were the curtains pulled ; and, pacing
up and down before those doors with the regularity
of soldiers, two men full of the importance of their
mission, occupied and irritated his mind. An
oil lamp was swung across the broad street at
this point ; its light was just sufficient to show
their figures.

The night was very dark indeed and perfectly
still. The thunder clouds that had been rising
ever since he had left the hall with his companions
of the Sections now occupied the greater part of
the sky, and already far off up river one or two
vague flashes had announced the approach of
the storm.

Georges strolled across the large paved way,
sauntered in his fine dress, with his little sword
tilted at his side, and his tall figure taller in the
darkness, till he came quite close to those two

THE GIRONDIN. 61

sentinels whom the populace had set outside his
uncle's portal. He stood not ten feet off, watching
them for some moments ; they knew who he was,
and they therefore neither challenged him nor
noticed his presence. Their regular pacing back
and forth continued to exasperate his mood. He
had paid his money to the Section ; he had bought
off such insults ; he felt himself tricked and
betrayed.

Each of the sentinels was armed after the rough
fashion of the populace in the Sections : one with
a pike, the other with a large old-fashioned sword,
a curved, light cavalry sword ; and peering closer
Georges saw that this one was — of all men —
Miltiades !

Georges hailed him, but Miltiades did not
answer ; he maintained his solemn pacing to
and fro, and disdained all interruption.

There stood before the house, a few feet from
the door, a rounded post of stone, convenient for
a man to hoist himself up on if he were willing to
sit and dangle his feet at some inches from the
ground. Georges Boutroux scrambled up upon
it, sat there and fixed Miltiades with his eyes,
slowly swinging his glance, pendulum-like, as that
amateur sentry stolidly paced to the end of his
beat ; swinging it back again as Miltiades crossed

62 THE GIRONDIN.

to the other end of the measure ; and so for half
a dozen times.

Georges again broke the silence. It was as
Miltiades was crossing him for the seventh time
that he asked him "at what hour he would be
relieved."

The Jacobin did not reply ; he continued his
pacing. Georges continued his taunt, raising and
lowering his voice as the other distanced and
neared.

"It was a mistake to give money down," he
said ; " wages are best paid to the unskilled
labourer after his work is done — one can trust
him better so. And, by the way, is it not an
error to trust common men with arms ? They
might misuse them — nay, they might wound
themselves. Miltiades, my great commander, I
have a mind to sleep in my bed to-night, and I
paid for the convenience, did I not ? . . . I seem to
remember it that I bespoke an expensive inn. . . .
I did not pay with the object that any foreman
might pick men from the gutter to play at soldiers
outside my window. ... I have a whim about my
house, Miltiades — I have a point of honour in the
matter of my sleeping-places, Miltiades, as some
men have of other more human possessions —
I like it to be left alone at night. . . ."

THE GIRONDIN. 63

Here the sentry was crossing just before him
again, and Georges added in a tone that was soft
and exceedingly provocative : " When are you
relieved ? Must I wait here to discover, or will
you let me go indoors first ? "

Miltiades answered for the first time.

" I have orders," said he shortly, not so much
as looking round on his interlocutor — " I have
orders to speak to no one. I am on sentry-

"Well," said Georges, yawning and stretching
his arms, " there's the devil of it ! If I knew
at what hour you were to be relieved, I would
go off" and have a glass, and come back to speak
when you were more at leisure, and perhaps to
share your wages . . . (though it is true I have
mounted no guard) . . . and then I might slip in —
who knows ? "

Miltiades said nothing, but continued his solemn
pace. He was almost out of sight in the darkness
and back again for the twentieth time before he
was addressed again.

"Miltiades," said the tall young gentleman,
" do you happen to have about you another
sword ? "

"No," said Miltiades shordy, and passed.

"That is awkward," said Georges, raising his

64 THE G1RQNDIN.

voice a little with every step by which the other
removed. " That is awkward, because I am
getting cold in spite of the warmth of the
night . . . and I must take some exercise. 1 have
heard it said," he continued in a monologue
which he modulated for the other to hear as
he approached and passed again — "I have heard
it said that it is quite easy to fence with a rapier
against a cavalry sword. . . . I've even seen it
done ! "

The swart Miltiades was stubborn and continued
his pacing, crossing once more before that stone
pillar on which Georges sat.

"And I believe," continued Georges, a little
more vivaciously, "that it can be done quite
easily ... it would be fun to try." He slipped
down from the stone pillar to the ground.

Miltiades had turned again, when he saw
Georges Boutraux, standing in his path, suddenly
draw his rapier — the little toy rapier of his
evening dress— and put himself upon his guard
Miltiades halted. "I have orders," he said
plainly, "to cut any one down who tries to
enter this house." He looked squarely into
Georges' eyes as he had done earlier in the
night ; it was evident that he liked playing at
soldiers.

THE GIRONDIN. 65

"That is what I want to test," said Georges.
"When you cut down a man you cut in carte.
If you thrust, it is another matter ; but if you
cut in carte I can parry."

" Don't be a fool ! " answered Miltiades.

He began his pacing again and turned his back
to Boutroux ; he was thinking, as he moved away,
what he should do if his adversary proved stub-
born, when he felt in the fat of the left shoulder,
just below the shoulder blade, a sharp sting such
as a man may feel when a hot coal touches
him or the flick of a whip. He turned round
furiously. Georges Boutroux had pricked him
with the rapier. He cut violently at him with
a downward stroke, awkwardly enough, and his
cavalry sword slipped and spent itself along the
other's easy guard ; he almost over-reached.

"I told you how it would be," said Georges.
" I am determined to see whether it is true or
not that a rapier can fence with a cavalry sword,
for I have always heard that it can." He put
up his left hand for a balance, threw himself into
the posture his fencing school had taught him,
and played with the point of the weapon as
though he were seeking some other mark wherein
to worry the bull.

Miltiades growled. "I can kill you," he said.

66 THE GIROND1N.

As he said it he clenched his left arm behind his
back and put his cavalry sword up to the guard.

"That's just what I wanted to see," said
Georges, in the tone of a man who is playing
chess. "I don't believe you can. I have a
mind to stick you in the gizzard, wherever that
may be : it is an organ I have often heard of
but never seen. Meanwhile, lest I should murder
a brother-in-law before the wedding, or a claimant
in blackmail before due payment, or anyhow a
good companion though one a trifle importunate
for cash, I beseech you to settle it with me here
whether a rapier can or can not hold its own
against a cavalry sword. If you only knew how
often I have heard that issue discussed ! "

Miltiades was not ready at repartees ; he said
suddenly : " I . . ." and lifted his blade.

"I, on the other hand . . ." said Boutroux,
and he lunged suddenly. . . .

Miltiades parried : he was too strictly occupied
to think of calling the other sentry to his aid ;
he parried, and immediately after he had parried
he thrust too low, and all his weight went after
the heavy blade. Georges stepped to the right
sharply, the cavalry sword just shaved his hip ;
he pointed and lunged home. Georges felt "his
blade bend hard, and the cloth give and the

THE GIRONDIN. 67

flesh. Then the steel went suddenly in — too
easily. Miltiades' big body seemed to stumble
up against the handle of the rapier and to lean
on it ; for a doubtful, suspended moment in the
half darkness Georges Boutroux could just see a
puzzled look in the fellow's eyes.

Then the cavalry sword swiped vaguely and
angrily in the air, and caught Boutroux a great
crack in the rib ; but that sword did not pierce
a wound. Boutroux withdrew his blade with a
sharp gesture from the cloth and the flesh ; and the
hilt pulled away from the other's body, Mil-
tiades doubled forward like a man who would
vomit. The cavalry sword fell from his hand,
held to his wrist only by its leather thong.
Then down he went, collapsing into a heap of
clothes.

" I told you how it would be," said Georges to
that heap of clothes which still moved a little —
he said it sternly. " You ought to thrust with
the sword. . . ."

But from Miltiades there was no answer, except
the low noise of a man not in pain, but so weak
from something that he could no more : after
that there was no sound.

Georges breathed deeply and went upon one knee
to look closely into the dead man's face. The

68 THE G1RONDIN.

other sentry came up at a run from his thirty
yards away in the darkness.

" What have you done ? " he cried. He was
a blond, rather inept young man, frightened at the
circumstance, and his tall pike shook in his hand.

" Don't argue," said Georges shortly. He
slipped the leathern thong of the sword from
Miltiades' wrist and over the dead man's still
limp right hand. He strung it across his own
right, grasped the sword, stood at his full height,
and said : " I'm a little blown, my friend ! "

" What has happened ? " asked the young man
with the pike again.

" It is an accident," said Georges, " a very
deplorable accident. You see, I belong to this
house . . . and . . . and he knew it."

The young man with the pike looked down at
the heap of clothes from which no moan pro-
ceeded. He turned the fallen man's face up
into the glimmer of the light of the lantern
where it swung high above them, from its cord
across the street. " Is he dead ? " said the young
man with the pike, scared and worried.

" 1 hope not," said Georges, " I sincerely hope
not. . . . But I tell you I belong to this house,
and I want to get in."

The young man with the pike turned sullen.

THE GIRONDIN. 69

" You'll have to answer for this to-morrow ! " he
said angrily.

" No doubt," said Georges ; " but meanwhile 1
want to get into my uncle's house."

He hoisted himself clumsily upon the stone
pillar again, his dress rapier lying useless on the
pavement, with a few marks of blood upon it
still ; and he faced that other adversary.

"To tell you the truth, Citizen," he said
nervously, "I am full of prejudices, and the ','
thundery weather or something else has heated j
my blood."

The man with the pike edged nearer to the
door and set his weapon forward doggedly. "You
have killed my companion," he said, "and you
shall answer for it. But I have my orders."

"You are not certain that he is dead," said
Georges gently, "and I should doubt it. A
man does not die so easily . . . but I do fancy
he is grievously the weaker for his wound . . .
he must have lost blood, my friend, or in that
swipe of his he would have broken a rib of
mine. As it is, I have a terrible great stitch
in my side. I don't know what it is," he
added, swinging his feet against the stone pillar,
"but there is something I can't stomach in
seeing two men mounting guard before my own

70 THE GIRONDIN.

door — or for the matter of that, one man." He
felt recovered, and his voice was easy and strong.

"1 have my orders," said the young fellow
with the pike again sullenly.

"Now the problem," continued Boutroux in
the same tone, scratching his nose the while
with the forefinger of his left hand, "the pro-
blem of the cavalry sword against the pike is
quite another matter. . . . There you stand
with your great pike, and you have a reach, I
suppose " (and he put his head on one side
thoughtfully), "of a good six feet from your
body, counting to the tip of the unpleasant
thing you hold . . . it is certainly awkward ! "

He slid from the stone pillar, stood up,
shook his legs into stiffness, clenched his left
fist behind his back, and put the sword on
guard.

"You would be wiser to go before there is
trouble," said his opponent as methodically as
he could.

"That," acquiesced Boutroux heartily, "is
undoubtedly true ; but it applies to us both.
It is always unwise to meddle with edged
tools." And he tapped the head of the pike
aggressively with the flat of the great sword.

The other lunged at him with his long,

THE GIRONDIN. 71

clumsy weapon rather half-heartedly and as
though by way of empty menace only ; he was
evidently doubtful in the use of arms. "Get
out ! " he said.

" No," said Boutroux, " that is against my
inclinations. I want to get in. If you would
but go home quietly like a sensible man, carry-
ing your pike slantways across your shoulder
(if you feel more grandly so), or balanced level
(which I believe is the more orthodox drill),
nay, if you would but drop it where it is (for
it is a heavy thing to carry about) and walk
away like a good fellow, what a mountain of
trouble would be saved ! "

" If you do not cease . . ." said the other,
raising his voice.

"Hush," begged Boutroux soothingly, "hush!
no shouting, I pray ! My people are old folk, and
they detest brawling at night outside their doors.
Why, they have reproved me for no more than
having myself seen home by one or two jovial
companions ! Come, there are only us two, and
no one to see. Which is it to be ? Will you
cover yourself with glory and be hurt, or will
you be off? For it is getting late, and only
just now I felt the first drop of rain fall on
me, and I fear there's going to be a storm."

72 THE GIRONDIN.

The other did not move. A patter of rain,
big, slow, and heavy, began to sound.

"If only," continued Boutroux, "you had a
sword as I have, how simple it would be ! We
would waltz round and round each other in the
prettiest fashion, and clash and parry and make
all the music that butchers make when they
sharpen their knives on their steels outside their
shops. But that ugly great pike of yours is
such an intolerable clumsy thing that I know
not how to deal with it." He advanced to-
wards the door in one sharp step, and as he
did so, the other plunged the pike awkwardly
against him, caught the cloth of his sword arm,
the shirt beneath it, and the skin, and grazed
the surface of the flesh.

Boutroux was hurt sharply, and intolerably
vexed. He swore, not loudly. He cut once
and thrust twice, edging round his opponent,
then he closed well in ; but that irresolute man,
finding his heavy pike in his way at close
quarters, had dropped his weapon and was
clawing out desperately with his hands as
though he would hold the sword. The blunt
sword did no work save strike and bruise.
Boutroux, more angry as he pressed the man
back, struck at his head. The man weakly put

THE GIRONDIN. 73

up one arm to guard it. Boutroux struck
again ; and he felt, or thought he felt, the fore-
arm break at the blow. But even as he felt it
his own arm weakened — it was bleeding badly
at the new surface wound in his arm — and that
curious, acrid, sinking feeling which goes with
the loss of blood pervaded him in the darkness.
Still he pressed upon that other, striking away
with his iron, too close and too cramped, and
more and more weakly.

The irresolute, disarmed, and tall young sentry,
beaten like a beefsteak for cooking, bewildered,
dazed with bangs about the head, and vaguely
imagining that war must be a damnable thing,
broke suddenly away and ran.

Boutroux ran after — and was surprised to find
how stumblingly and ill he ran. He fell prone
in the first few yards ; and as he lay sprawling,
and wondering why it was so difficult to rise,
he heard the echoing and rapid scamper of his
late opponent diminishing further and further
off down the empty stoneway of the quays.

He lay on there stupidly, listening to the

flying feet with a sort of pleasure, hearing the

tiny tap, tap, tap grow less and less, but still

just catching it. He knew, as his bewildered

mind received pain, wet, and silence all at

3a

74 THE GIRONDIN.

once, that things were changing. The earth
seemed to be moving. He thought for a
moment that he was on a ship : he felt woefully
sick. He tried to vomit, and failed ; and dur-
ing that confusion he was aware that a violent
rain was falling. With one doubtful, unfocussed
eye he could see the splashing of the drops in
the lamplight. Then, for he did not know
how long, his mind was filled with nothing but
the perpetual crashing of thunder. . . .

******

He emerged from such a stupor as a man
may emerge from an ill-conditioned and unhealthy
sleep. The rumbling of the thunder, now more
distant, was the sensation to which he first attended.
Then he noted that it was lighter, that it was
dawn. The storm had washed the streets and
the air ; the trees far off beyond the river stood
out quite still, and wonderfully sharp. His brain
cleared as he watched them, lying there upon
the pavement. He shivered, and found that it
was cold.

He tried to raise himself upon his right elbow,
and suffered so acute a spasm of pain as he
had not yet felt in his life ; and when he raised
his head he saw the cause of the extreme weak-
ness which had made him swoon.

THE GTRONDIN. 75

All round his right hand, as it lay limp on
the pavement, was a mass of dirty, rainwashed
blood ; it was from his wound. He looked at
the blood curiously for a moment, tangled in
the cut of the cloth ; he had never been wounded
before, and he did not like it.

He turned his head weakly. On the wall
above him was a ring, an iron ring set in a
staple, such as men tie the bridles of their horses
to when they stop and call at a house ; he
could just reach it with his left hand. He did
so, pulled himself up with an incredible effort,
and staggered to his feet.

" I have read a good deal about fighting,"
he said to himself. "It is quite, quite different
from what I had imagined from my reading."

He took his right forearm in his open left
hand gently and tenderly as though it had been
a baby. He dandled it a bit, and moved it until
it was somewhat more easy.

Then he remembered what he had read about
the danger of dirt in wounds.

He very methodically took out his toy-penknife,
and with the tiny blade of it he cut off all the
cloth that lay above the wound. Then with the
same instrument he cut the shirt wrist off as well
and flung it from him. He bethought him what

76 THE GIRONDIN.

to do for a bandage. He cut a long strip from
the upper part of the shirt sleeve, he staggered
across the quay to the riverside, dipped the
stiffening wound in the water by way of washing
it — and wondered as he did so whether the water
were clean enough to satisfy a surgeon — then
he wound his strip of linen round and round
by way of bandage, and having so done, quenched
an intolerable thirst which he suddenly felt, and
quenched it most unwisely in the brackish water
of the Garonne. But wise or no, the draught
revived him.

He remembered what he had next to do, and
he went feebly, haltingly, very unready but
determined, towards his uncle's door on the
far side of the street some hundred yards away.

Even in such a dire circumstance Boutroux
could not neglect the beauty of that morning. It
seemed as though the politics and the violence and
the bloodshed of the night belonged to some nasty
drunken play-acting which he had seen upon a
stage and had followed a thought too vividly.

The beautiful sweep of the city, the long and
lovely crescent of the quays, stood lonely and
clean in the early light ; the air was quite lucid
since the storm that had purged it, and every
mast and yard, and the very details of the rope-

THE GIRONDIN. 77

work upon the ships, showed like things deliber-
ately drawn by some strong and decided hand.

He felt an odd peace ; he remembered how
quarrels even between an old man and his heir
belonged to the night. He felt how very differ-
ent was every new morning from the fevers of
its preceding darkness ; he even began a sort
of little comedy with himself: how he would
speak to his aunt and uncle of what he had
done ; how they would welcome him — for they
could not mistake his courage or his devotion
to their roof and their door.

He came up to that door — he was careful
not to note under the dawn the body of a dead
man. He knocked at the door gently, then
louder ; there was no answer.

He tapped at the porter's window gently again,
and again louder. He saw the curtain drawn
aside, and old Nicholas' head appearing, a dirty
cotton nightcap on his poll, a frightened look
in his eyes. Old Nicholas shook his head.

Georges Boutroux beckoned towards the wicket,
and that faithful servant hobbled out to speak
to him. Georges did not hear the familiar
drawing of the bolt : all he heard was the
unfastening of the little shutter behind the iron
grating, and old Nicholas whispering to him, —

78 THE GIRONDIN.

" Oh, Master Georges, I have orders ! "

Weak as he was, the mood of the night was
still strong upon Georges Boutroux wounded,
and he said, in a voice which was less than his
own, and sadly : " What ! Have you also got
orders ? Every one seems to have orders ! And
you, Nicholas, what are your orders ? "

" Oh, sir," said Nicholas in a frightened whisper,
" I am to hold the door ! "

"Why," said Georges in his weak voice, and
with the sickness coming back upon him, "that
was what he said," and he motioned back with
his head to the heap of clothes which had been
Miltiades.

The old porter caught a glimpse through the
little iron grating and shuddered.

"Master Georges," he muttered in another
voice, "we heard a scuffle, but oh, we never
dreamt ! Master Georges, I would give my life
for you, I would indeed ! "

"And damn it all," said Master Georges,
mastering his sickness, "I pretty nearly did give
it for you ! "

" Master Georges, I know the master — I knew
him before you were born. He will not let you
in this day."

" Old Nicholas, if you do not let me in before

THE GIRONDIN. 79

the city awakens, and these things are discovered,
they will take me and kill me. Do you know
that ? "

" Master Georges, I could not make him under-
stand. Master Georges, he said, 'Whoever you
let in, even if you let in some one who would
parliament from the mob, do not let in my
nephew ; for I will never see him again.' Master
Georges, he said that you were a traitor and the
cause of all his misfortunes."

" My uncle," said Georges Boutroux in a sudden
voice and with a weakening gesture, " is too fond
of generalisation. We must respect this frailty
in the aged." His mind rapidly surveyed his
lessening chances. " Nicholas," he said, " I have
no money."

"Oh, Master Georges," said the old man, "all
I have is yours."

"Why then," said Georges, smiling at him,
"let me have it. You shall not in the long
run be a loser."

"And, Master Georges," said the old porter
eagerly, " you should have wine if you are to go
into hiding, and a little bread."

" Bread I can buy later," said Georges, " but
a crust will do me no harm — and some sausage.
As for wine, one can never have enough of it,

80 THE GIRONDIN.

for it makes blood ; and that, you see, my poor
Nicholas, I have been uncorking rather recklessly.
. . . Only, dear Nicholas, be quick ! " And even
as he spoke a company of workmen half a mile
away were gathering at one of the barges and
beginning to unload. "The moment they see
that," nodding with his head backwards towards
the body at which he would not look, " the dance
will begin. And I was never fond of dancing."

Old Nicholas hobbled the step to his room
with fond tears all over his face. He came back,
and through the lifted grating passed a bottle
of wine which the young man hid in his coat
pocket, the end of a loaf of bread, a hunk of
sausage, and a pathetic bunch of assignats worth
on their face value two hundred livres.

" If you'll put your hand through the grating,
Nicholas," said Georges, " I will kiss it."

"Oh, Master Georges, it is I who should
kiss your hand ! " said Nicholas.

"I will remember to give you an opportunity
of doing that," said Georges, " upon some later
occasion — but whatever you do, do not break
your orders. The passion for obeying orders
is very strong in Bordeaux just now, and the
reputation of the family must be maintained."

The old man put out a hand like wrinkled,

THE GIRONDIN. 81

brown, and carven wood through the opening.
Boutroux held it and kissed it gently. He turned
his back upon the front of the house which was
the only home he had known, and went off, not
toward the bridge,, where he feared the traffic
and recognition, but rapidly to the quayside.

The many boats that lay there he surveyed
critically, though with a drooping and a wearied
eye ; he saw one hitched by a looser knot than
the rest, and with his unwounded left hand and
arm unmoored it. He stepped in, and sculling
at the stern with that same whole left arm, his
wounded right arm supported in his fob, he
gained the further shore. Without turning to
see his city or his home again, Georges plunged
through the growing grass of the aftermath
towards the vineyards upon the low slopes half
a mile away.

In this way did Boutroux begin his adventures.

CHAPTER V.

In which several Lies are told in an Inn.

I ""HERE was long grass — not the grass of the
aftermath, but the wild, self-sown grass of
centuries — in the empty flats just under the spring
of the vineyard hills.

Boutroux lay in the depth of it, contented in
spite of the throbbing of his wound. He drank
a portion of his wine, and said to himself, " The
best of wine will taste sour of a morning." And
he wondered what vintage it was, knowing that
old Nicholas would have given him the best ;
but he could not decide.

He ate his sausage and his bread. He
ceased to care very much, as drowsiness came
upon him, either for that through which he had
passed, or for the memory of his home, or for
whatever might lie before him. He yawned in
comfort, looked drowsily with half- closed eyes
at the city beyond the river and the tall masts.

THE GIRONDIN. 83

The confused recollection of the night, with its
violence and its quarrel and its bloodshed, fatigued
him, and at last fatigued him pleasantly, so that
he fell into a profound sleep.

When he woke from this it was already after-
noon. The sun was still high, but its light was
mellow, and Boutroux woke to feel a mixture
of two things : the content that comes from a
deep and satisfying slumber, and the angry in-
flammation of his arm.

Then he began to remember. The light told
him that many hours had passed, and that it
was late in the afternoon ; and he clearly con-
ceived what must be happening in the city
beyond the broad stream upon that Thursday,
the 9th of August.

He sat up in the grass and peered with close
eyes at the very distant houses, as though he
hoped over such a stretch of land and water
to make out what was happening there. He
thought how, long before this, that which had
been Miltiades would have been discovered. The
Section would have met ; the Club was not slow
to action ; the city authorities would have had
to take cognizance of the death ; and the police
would be moving, too.

He wondered what witnesses they had found;

84 THE GIRONDIN.

where they would think that he had taken his
flight ; whether the boat would be missed — he
had had the sense to cast it adrift. He only
hoped it had gone far down the stream, and
had not caught near by in the reeds of the river
bank. He wondered whether the Section or the
authorities had entered that house to take the
depositions ; whether old Nicholas would lie or
be silent, or would blurt out the story of his
escape. He could see his uncle, whom the city
respected and feared for his wealth, sitting digni-
fied at his table and answering with disdain
whatever questions might be put to him, and
repudiating him, Georges, and leaving him to
his fate ; he had no doubt of that. Then he
began wondering where news would be sent,
and by whom. One thing grew clearer and
clearer to him as these appreciations of danger
succeeded each other in his mind : he must get
off northward by the by-paths. And he only
wished he knew more of the countryside.

As he so planned his wound began to pain
him again and to throb. He attempted to re-
move the bandage upon it. It had dried, and
he found the pain of tearing it off excruciating.
He set his teeth, pulled hard, and partly opened
the wound again. He was interested as well as

THE GIRONDIN. 85

suffering: he thought it rather grand to have a
wound. It was evident to him that he must
get it bandaged by some one who understood
such things, and he reflected a little grimly that
he might understand them himself before he
had ended his adventures, for wounds were
becoming common, and times were worsening.

"I will wait," he murmured to himself, "until
I come across some more of this civilian fighting,
and nose out the doctor of it. But meanwhile,
wounds make one look a trifle too partisan."

As he was so thinking and speaking to him-
self, he heard behind him the creaking of a
country cart, drawn by two stout, slow oxen,
their heads bent beneath a heavy yoke. He
saw seated in the cart a very small, weazened
old man, with thin, grey hair under an extremely
dirty felt hat, shaven cheeks and chin, and little
eyes as sharp and bright as augers.

The cart stopped, and its driver asked Bou-
troux, guessing by his fine dress that he must
have a watch upon him, what was the time
of day.

Boutroux had almost pulled out the little
gold watch with his name engraved on it, when
he thought better of the matter.

" I cannot tell you," he said, shaking his head.

86 THE GIRONDIN.

" I have had a most unfortunate adventure, and
my valuables have been taken from me." With
that he sighed, and continued to nurse his
wounded arm.

The old man looked at him keenly. "Where
did this happen to you ? " he said.

" On the river," said Boutroux readily. " My
people are already many miles up-stream. We
\ were passengers from Nantes. My father and
his family were still aboard and the ship anchored
in the stream, when I offered two fellows some-
thing to row me along in the early morning to
see the city from the water. They set upon
me, and in the struggle I was wounded, as you
see. They stunned me, and put me ashore here
upon the country side of the stream."

The old peasant continued to gaze at him.
"Where does your father's ship lie?" he asked.

"It is not my father's ship," corrected Bou-
troux gently. " He is only a passenger upon it ;
and I think," he added doubtfully, shading his
eyes from the declining sun with his left hand
and gazing up-stream to see if there were any-
thing there in the semblance of a vessel — "yes,
I think that is her moored nearest to the
bridge."

" What is her name ? " said the peasant.

THE GIRONDIN. 87

" The Helene," answered Boutroux briskly, " the
Helene of Nantes — it is on her stern. If you
are going that way you shall take me there, and
I will see that you are rewarded."

The old peasant shook his head. " I'm not
going to the city to-day," he said, " money or
no money. There's been fighting. . . ." He
looked doubtfully at the young man, and added,
" I will take you for one livre, if you can promise
me that sum, to the nearest village upon the
highroad, and there you can fend for yourself."

Boutroux remembered his tale. " My valu-
ables, as I told you, have been taken from me,
but I am good for more than a few livres
anywhere on the highroad," he said. " The
master of the post-house will know me, for
one.

The old peasant communed with himself and
risked it, and Boutroux clambered up by his
side.

The jolting of the cart over the rough vine-
yard way caused him no little pain in his swollen
arm. He found the very slow progress of the
vehicle and the silence of the old peasant, still
gazing over his oxen's heads and uttering an
occasional rustic cry to encourage them, exas-
perating. The ride was not six miles, but it

88 THE GIRONDIN.

consumed three hours, and it was already evening
and the sun had set when they saw before them
the low- tiled roofs of a village. Their strict
alignment told Boutroux that they stood along
the great highroad. It was dark by the time
the ox -cart had paced its humble way to the
old peasant's barn in the main street.

Boutroux stepped down in the half-light, and
the little old man, fixing him steadily and by
no means politely with his gaze, said, —

" What about that livre ? What about that
franc?"

" Old man," said Boutroux, " will you give me
half an hour to find it in ? "

" No," said the old man.

" Yet you will get it so and in no other way,
for I know a man in this village."

"I will come with you," said the old man
simply.

The necessity of hiding his name and progress,
and yet the necessity of paying off so impor-
tunate a hanger-on, and the necessity of main-
taining his first story of a robbery, between them
troubled Boutroux not a little. An idea struck
him.

"Will you let me find it if I promise you
two?"

THE GIRONDIN. 89

The peasant shook his head.

" Will you let me find it if I promise you one
silver scutcheon ? "

" No," said the peasant, " I must follow you
and get my livre."

" Very well," said Boutroux triumphantly, " you
shall learn now that all this was to test you. For
I have the money upon me, as you shall see."
And fishing out the assignat, he paid it in the
other's palm, trusting to an argument which should
cover his tracks.

But the old peasant did not budge. He looked
carefully at the inscription in the light of a neigh-
bouring window, stretched the paper, pocketed it,
and said steadily, —

" Then what you told me was a lie ? "

" It was," said Boutroux cheerfully.

" How did you come by your wound ? " asked
the old man.

"Father," replied Boutroux, with something
threatening in his voice, "if you ask me how I
came by my wound or catechise me further, or by
so much as half an inch show that curiosity in my
movements which I do not choose to gratify, I will
indeed show you how I came by my wound, and
that in such a manner as to give you what I gave
the man who gave it me. Believe me, father,

9o THE GIRONDIN.

when I have argued the matter out with you so,
you will understand it more thoroughly."

The little old man was silent. He said, —

" I believe you are a bad son ; I believe you are
a wastrel. This matter shall be looked into."

He went to his oxen's heads and began backing
them into the barn, and Boutroux, not allowing
himself to exaggerate his pace, though he would
have given much to run off and be free from this
chance enemy, sauntered up the great road which
the village lined on either side ; as he went he
raged in his heart. It seemed as though every
one were the enemy of the unfortunate, and so
raging inwardly he went on till he came to the
extreme end of the street and saw there the sign
and lights and heard the noises of an inn.

" In an inn," he thought, " one may always find
diversion and sometimes refuge. An innkeeper
is an important man in such a place : he will be
the postmaster as well, and if I make it worth his
while he will protect me from any insolence."

With that in his mind Boutroux sauntered into
the main room of the inn, lifted his hat — crumpled
with the night's adventure and with his sleep in
the grass — and called for a mug of wine.

He was seated in a dark corner, some feet away
from the half-dozen or so who were gathered in

THE GIRONDIN. 91

the room. He leant his head on his hand to shade
his face from the distant lamp. Soon the wine
was brought him by the postmaster himself, and
Boutroux, watching that man's not kindly face,
beneath the shadow of his hand, asked if there
were any news of the city.

" Oh yes, news of a sort," said the postmaster,
eyeing him and his torn, muddy finery, his tousled
head, and his tired face suspiciously, but at the
same time hoping to entertain a customer who,
however bedraggled by weather or accident, was
by his dress apparently wealthy. "There was
trouble last night . . . it's led to more to-day."

" What happened ?" asked Boutroux, sick within
himself in his anxiety for the reply.

"I don't take sides," said the postmaster, hesi-
tating ; " I'm a public servant ; I keep this inn,
and I trust I serve my customers faithfully. And
the King also."

At the word "King," several in the company
laughed. The postmaster reproved them.

" I know my duty," he said ; and then he added
in a lower tone to Boutroux, "You mustn't mind
my questions ; the authorities have sent a list of
them from the city ; they're looking for a man
who's wanted ; and I've had to get every one to
sign as a matter of form since the coach came in."

92 THE GIRONDIN.

He was silent for a moment as he drew from his
pocket a sheet of paper — a printed form half filled
in with writing. He looked at it, and then closely
at the young man again. " What is your name ?"
he asked.

" Marchand," answered Boutroux readily, "Mar-
chand, Victor. I was coming from Saintes, where
my father is Procurator. He sent me in our
carriage to reach Bordeaux this evening, but we
had a spill. I walked on here to get a relay,
but I shan't go further to-night ; I shall sleep
here."

" Oh ! " answered the postmaster ; he was re-
lieved that this suspicious guest should sleep at
the inn ; it gave him time to decide about some-
thing. Meanwhile he reached down a great book,
opened it at a dirty page full of scrawls, and
pushed it towards Georges. " Sign here," he said.

Georges, mastering the pain in his forearm,
signed with his uncertain right hand, " Marchand,
Victor." And the book was replaced.

" What was the trouble in the city ? " he said
quietly to the postmaster.

" I tell you I don't take sides," said that func-
tionary again.

A short, good-natured, low-browed young fellow
in a rough cotton shirt, with a dirty stuff jacket

THE G1RONDIN. 93

tied round his neck, his arms out of the sleeves,
broke into a loud laugh.

" You are too squeamish," he said. " You
were ready enough before the gentleman came
in. Fact is," he went on, looking partly in envy
and partly in jest and partly with a sort of spite
at Boutroux's ruined smart clothes, " they've been
un-nesting some aristo's in the city."

" When ? " said Boutroux gently.

"Last night," sneered the young man. . . .
" And to-day, good work ! "

"That's not honest business," broke in the
postmaster hurriedly, "and I won't have politics
in my house. There's been too much already ! "

A wealthy-looking peasant, elderly and solid,
contributed his view. " It is our business to
get the murderer," he said.

" Of course," said the innkeeper nervously.

" Oh ! the Club'U see to that," said the young
man who had spoken first. " It's their man was
killed — the man who- killed him was a spy — and
the old devil who sent him was at the back
of it."

"We've no proof of that," said the peasant
judicially.

" Well," said the young man, " the * authorities '
you're so keen on may catch the assassin first ;

94 THE GIRONDIN.

but I'll put my money on the Club — they're all
over the country for him."

Two grooms who were present nodded in
assent, and a gentleman in rather subdued clothing
and with a worried face — a lawyer, one would say
by his appearance — who was eating an omelette
and drinking a glass of wine at a more distant
table, looked up furtively.

The young man added : " And I hope they
scrag the old devil too ! "

One of the grooms spat on the ground to
relieve the pipe which he was smoking, puffed
at it twice, and said, —

" Old Boutroux, to hell ! "

The other nodded again, and said : " Yes,
and his wife."

" Do you know them ? " said the young,
low-browed man in the shirt, glancing suspiciously
at Georges.

" Yes," said Georges frankly, " I do. I know
them well. It was only quite a short time ago
that I was in their house. I should be sorry
if anything happened to them."

" Monsieur knows perfectly well," said the
innkeeper and postmaster rapidly, " that these
men who are speaking are worthless. Pay no
attention to what they say, sir. They speak and

THE GIRONDIN. 95

imagine horrors. Monsieur Boutroux is a good
Patriot ; he has repudiated his nephew, sir. It
was his nephew who did it ... a spy, sir, a man
in pay of the Austrians."

"He killed an honest working man worth ten
of him," said the elderly peasant.

Boutroux smiled serenely at them all.

" Your opinions are various, gentlemen ! " he
said. " It seems," he added, turning to the
innkeeper, "that there's been a murder, and the
police want the murderer ? "

The innkeeper nodded.

" Aye ! " broke in the young labourer savagely,
"but the Club want him now, and they'll get
him — he was one of their own — the dirty traitor ! "

" He was a spy," repeated the groom. " So
was his old devil of an aunt ; and she hid priests,
and he was a Jesuit himself ! "

Again the innkeeper begged for peace. " Don't
hear them, sir ! " he said to Georges. " They're
scum — ignorant scum ! At least I can answer
for it in the case of my two grooms. As for that
third fellow," he said contemptuously, jerking his
thumb at the young workman in the shirt, " I can
tell you less, for he has only been a journeyman
with me now for a week. We all respect
Monsieur Boutroux here — we are most concerned

96 THE GIRONDIN.

for him in his affliction for the worthless
heir."

" Go easy, master," said the young workman
good-humouredly. " The gentleman wants to
. learn."

" Exactly," said Boutroux. " I have not been
to Bordeaux since six weeks ago, and I should
be sorry if anything had happened to my old
friends."

"Oh, nothing has happened to them," said
the groom, spitting again. "What ever does
happen to the rich ? "

" You might be more gracious to the gentleman,"
said the postmaster. "One would think he had
done you an injury ! "

The groom then added a little more civilly :
"It's what they did to the People, that's what
puts our backs up."

" But hang it all," said Boutroux with an
easy laugh, " what did they do ? What's it all
about?"

" Only killed one honest man by treachery,
and would have killed a dozen others," sneered
the groom.

" Oh, nonsense," said Georges easily ; " I know
the Boutroux well. Why, the old gentleman and
his wife don't go about killing people."

THE GIROND1N. 97

"Do not believe what they say, sir," said the
postmaster for the third time, in an agony lest he
should lose wealthy custom. " They are worthless
hangers-on and corner boys, these loafers of mine ;
they repeat anything they hear."

"Well, there was a man dead anyhow," said
the groom, leaning his face forward angrily and
showing his teeth, " because I saw him."

"Yes," said his companion, "and I saw him
too, and 1 saw what he was killed with."

The postmaster was again about to intervene,
but Georges put up his hand.

"Pray, sir," he said, "let me hear the story
out. It is of a natural interest to me. Madame
Boutroux was one of my own aunt's few friends,
and my own uncle has spoken most highly to
me of M. Boutroux since 1 was quite a child.
I think it true to say that my uncle thought
M. Boutroux not only a good but a great man."

Said the groom : " It doesn't take long to
tell. They live in the Section of the Great Bridge ;
the Section heard that they were in a conspiracy,
and that the committee were meeting in their
rooms only last night, and that arms were stacked
in their cellars. They sent a deputation to see
the old traitor ; he refused to see them or to
speak to them. Just as the deputation was

98 THE GIRONDIN.

leaving the door, he appeared on the balcony and
shot at them, hitting a large number, including
a woman, a Patriot. I have seen her myself, and
she told me of it. When they had gone, one
man was missed. In the morning they sent
to fetch him, and found him lying dead outside
the door. That is the news."

" Dear me ! " said Georges, betraying an in-
creasing interest. " So the man was shot ? "

The groom nodded.

" No, he wasn't," said his companion ; " he was
stabbed."

"He was shot, I tell you," said the first man
angrily.

"And I tell you," said the other equally
positively, " that he was stabbed"

" And I tell you both," said the young artisan,
"that you are fools : he was stuck with a rapier.
I saw the wound, and so did many of the crowd."

"There was a crowd, then, when you left the
city ? " said Georges, indifferently.

"Aye," said the young workman, "it was
about two hours ago when I left. There was
a large crowd roaring round the house. Don't
listen to what they say," he added, shaking his
head over his shoulder towards the grooms.
"They've got hold of this morning's nonsense.

THE GIRONDIN. 99

I'm telling you what happened. It was a porter
at the quays. His sister keeps a coffee-stall
there, and he's got another sister dancing at
Libourne in the theatre there."

" I thought so," murmured Georges.

"You thought what ?" asked the artisan sharply.

"Why, I thought," said Georges quickly, "it
would be some poor fellow of the People who
had suffered. It is always so."

" It is," said the young workman, to whom
they were all now listening as the latest bearer
of the most authentic news. " But it wasn't
old Boutroux' s own act, nor his wife's. Some in
the Section went and apologised to them to-day
at three o'clock, and they're going to give old
Boutroux a civic crown. He's subscribed for
the volunteers. He's all right. He's got a dirty
dog of a nephew who used to go about with
the Austrian party ; got above himself — had
himself called * de ' Boutroux ; and then he would
pretend to be hand and glove with the Section.
Oh, he was rare ! That's the man that killed
the poor fellow. . . ." The workman pursed
his lips and added the syllable, " Poz' ! "

" Yes, that'll be him," said the grooms.

" I don't like to believe it ; I knew the little
cuss," said Georges. " He used to borrow money,

ioo THE GIRONDIN.

and he drank a little, but I don't think he'd kill
a man."

" That's the one," repeated the young workman,
striking his hand on his knee conclusively ; " that's
him ! "

The two grooms nodded. The postmaster said
sententiously, —

" Well, one hears many different stories from
different people, sir, doesn't one ? "

"Yes," said Georges, as though he only half
heard ; he was thinking rapidly and hard — but
as yet he had no plan.

The postmaster leant over to Georges and
whispered : "The fact is, sir (since you know
the family, I may as well tell you), it's the
King's party who are hottest ! They don't believe
the young man did it — but they're down on
him. They say he was a dirty fellow to join
the Jacobins, seeing his birth and all, and they're
keener on him than any ! We've got one here,
sir, in the town : an old colonel, retired — says
he knows him. He won't let him go if he
sees him ! "

" No ?" said Georges indifferently — and suddenly
alive to a new peril.

But even as he said it the old man of the ox-
cart came shuffling in and asked for wine.

THE GIRONDIN. 101

The old man's glance was furtive. He touched
his hair as ritual bade, and bowed, as ritual also
bade, to each of the company, rheumatically ; he
had not yet seen Georges. The innkeeper moved
to greet the newcomer. Georges Boutroux rose
stealthily in his corner, and muttering to himself,
" It never rains but it pours ! " he began to creep
by inches towards the neighbouring door.

The young workman was looking down at
the floor, swinging his hands between his knees ;
the two grooms were gazing at the small cooking
fire in the great open chimney — small as it was,
it was oppressive in that weather ; the lawyer-
looking man was untying the napkin from his
neck, having finished his meal : for the moment
no one was looking at Georges.

He was up ; he was out of the door quite
silently, like a ghost, slipping behind his host's
back ; he was out the room in the winking of
an eye, and already he had formed his plan.

He had seen outside the inn a chaise with lamps
lit and hood up, and an ostler hooking the two
horses' traces to the car. He divined that the
lonely lawyer-like gentleman who had just com-
pleted his meal and seemed in some terror of
democracy was on his way north. Georges'
plan matured as he crept into the passage. He

102 THE GIRONDIN.

marvelled to find his mind working so quickly.
He thought to himself, " It is a pity my uncle
did not make me a solicitor or a thief, or some-
thing of that kind ; but I myself did not know
my own aptitudes."

He slipped up the shadow of the house towards
the stables.

It was as he imagined ; in a little harness-room,
under the light of a swinging lamp, a postilion
in shirt and drawers was drawing on his riding-
breeches ; his yellow jockey cap and smart blue
coat lay ready by him, as did his whip and gloves
and his two jack-boots.

Boutroux came into that little room displaying
in his outstretched fist a bunch of notes, and as
he did so, said to the astonished fellow who
stood ready to curse or cry out, —

" One hundred livres ; do you see ? If you
will listen to me you will in a few moments be
worth one hundred livres. If you interrupt me
you will not have one." He pulled the assignats
forth in a wad, got the man right in the eye with
a steady look, and continued, " You are rider to
the chaise to-night, and your post is Mirambeau."

The postilion, full of mystery and tasting
adventure, said yes. He was a blue-eyed, tow-
headed boy of perhaps eighteen years.

THE GIRONDIN. 103

" Would you put your foot out that I may
measure it with mine ? " said Georges rapidly.
The postilion did so. Georges' foot was a little
the smaller. "I will keep my own boots," he
said.

"I will dress in your clothes," said Georges
in a rapid measure, " and you will dress in mine.
See, in this coat of mine, I put this hundred
livres. I will put on your clothes and cap, and
walk out to the chaise in your clothes and mount.
You shall follow me to see fair play. You shall
follow in your shirt sleeves. I shall be holding
my own coat with the hundred livres in it. You
will hold the two horses' heads. In your own
interests, you will not let them go until I hand
you that coat, and also in your interests, and as
you desire to keep what is in it when you have
it, you will let the horses go. Do you under-
stand ? It is a check on either of us cheating —
my family are in commerce, and I have learned
such ways."

The postilion nodded. He did not understand,
and he did not care. A hundred livres was an
overwhelming sum, and he saw it there with his
own eyes, staring him in the face.

The machinery of the transfer was perfected.

CHAPTER VI.

In which a Postilion goes Mad.

AT the door of the stable where it gave upon
the street, Boutroux, dressed in the pos-
tilion's clothes, with the postilion's large, peaked
hunter's cap drawn low over his eyes, and affect-
ing the postilion's swagger, advanced towards his
mount. The nervous professional man who had
been so silent during the altercation at the inn
was already hidden in the depths of the chaise,
for the showery thundery weather which still
threatened had caused his host to put up the
hood of it.

Boutroux mounted, with his discarded coat in
his hand. The fellow he had looted was standing
in his shirt sleeves holding the horses. He took
the coat, and let the horses go.

Boutroux caught the reins of the led horse
in his right hand, holding that hand gingerly
against his side, and wondering how the wound

THE GIRONDIN. 105

would fare if the led horse pulled. But these
old hack horses were like circus horses for
training, he reflected, and like feather beds for
slackness ; and as soon as he was out in the
darkness he would take the reins of both in his
left hand.

He was supposed to know the road; at least,
no instructions were given him. Georges had
come from the north some half-dozen times in
his young life, and he knew that his next stage
would not be further than Mirambeau, and that
there his fare would sleep. But he also knew
that at Mirambeau there would be lights, and
men acquainted with the work, and a dozen
stable - fellows, perhaps, too much inclined to
question a postilion. He had no intention of
reaching Mirambeau.

It was perhaps half-past nine when he heard

the order to start. Hardly was it given when

the master of the house shouted after him an

order to stop for some further directions or

other which he had forgotten. Boutroux suddenly

spurred the horse he was riding, the old thing

bolted forward, and the light and rather rickety

chaise was ofF at top speed, rolling dangerously

upon the paved highroad.

To play the postilion is not an easy thing.
ia

106 THE GIRONDIN.

It is a trade by itself — half a gunner's and half
a groom's. It has to do with horses — that is bad
enough ; but also it involves some knowledge
of the road. To play it as Boutroux desired
to play it needed much more ; it needed a
knowledge of things off the road as well, for
on that main road he was determined he would
not remain. He knew too well what might soon
be behind him ! Once or twice as he sped on
he thought that he heard some cry from his
fare. He still spurred steadily forward, not
sparing his cattle at the hills ; and he thought
to himself, " What fare ever yet complained of
a round speed ? " So he pressed forward.

The deluge of rain which had been threaten-
ing as they started broke upon them before
Etaudiers. They clattered through the village
— every light of the place out, and no witnesses
to the drive — under a pouring and deafening
shower ; and at Etaudiers it was — or, rather, just
outside the village — that Boutroux's determination
was taken.

Cross-roads may lead anywhere : they may end
in ploughed fields, in dead walls, or in quarries ;
and cross-roads at night may lead one straight
to the devil. But Boutroux was going to
risk it.

THE GIRONDIN. 107

The barest glimmer of a road in the darkness
leading to the right just outside Etaudiers deter-
mined him. N

He spurred again, suddenly, so that with a
heavy jolt the chaise lurched forward, and he
found himself and it off the highway on a
drenched earthen road, heavy going and almost
impassable. He could feel the strain on the traces
against his calves, but he urged the animals on,
and somehow they stumbled through.

He had turned so sharp a corner that the
rain beat now from the right side of the carriage
and on the right flanks of the beasts, upon the
right cheek of his face. The sudden passage
from the paved highroad into the muddy land
made a curious silence, in which one could hear
the sough of the tired hoofs in the mud, even
the very pattering of the rain. Boutroux was
so intent upon his escape that he had almost
forgotten the existence of the chaise behind him.
He had quite forgotten the existence of his
passenger, when he felt a very violent dig in
the small of his back, and loud but inchoate
sounds about " the wrong road " reached him
through the roaring of the storm.

He set his teeth, shouted to his horses, and,
as the going got a little drier at the top of a

108 THE GIRONDIN.

rise, compelled them to one further effort. The
rain was gradually ceasing, the wind falling with
it, and save the continual beat of his mounts'
feet there was nothing to interrupt the protests
now rising in violence from the unhappy man
between the wheels, and he heard first a series
of oaths, then two or three reasoned protests,
then after a short silence a really frenzied appeal.
But Etaudiers was not yet far enough away, and
Boutroux still pressed on.

He had covered all but another league, in
which he must have received some hundreds of
heavy thrusts in the back unheeded, before the
condition of his horses upon such a road gave
him some reason to pause. He had gone from
his starting-place at full speed for at least twelve
miles. Hills which by the strict regulation of
the law he was bound to walk he had taken at
a canter on the highroad ; for now some miles
he had left that highroad for a country track
on which no post - horse was warranted ; and
there were very evident signs in his own mount,
and even in the led horse, that they had come
to the end of their tether. He let them fall
to a walk, and then at last the words of the
gentleman who had commanded his services
could be consecutively made out. Boutroux

THE GIRONDIN. 109

turned round with a pleasant smile, his young,
handsome face lit strongly by the carriage lamps,
pulled his beasts to a halt, and asked what might
be the matter.

" The matter ! " said the unfortunate lawyer.
" The matter is, you dirty fool, that you will
find yourself in jail with the break of day ! "

Boutroux shook his head gently, and his smile
was really beautiful in the lamp-light, had the
exasperated traveller's mood only permitted him
to appreciate its beauty. " Oh no," he said in
a gentle manner, but (as he hoped) a little oddly.
" Oh no ; I shall not be in jail — I shall be in
the Kingdom of my Father. It lies," he added
ecstatically, " a little beyond the Hills of Gold."

" Good God ! " cried the lawyer loudly. Then
he muttered to himself, " I have to deal with
a madman."

" Very far away," continued Boutroux, fixing
him with large eyes in the lamplight as he turned
half round, continuing his harangue and touching
his horses to an easy walk — " very far beyond
the Hills of Gold is the Kingdom of my Father
— and it is there we ride, dear friend ! "

His fare made but a dark mass against the
hood of the carriage, and Boutroux, reflecting
how pale and conspicuous his own face must

no THE GIRONDIN.

be in the lamplight seen from the darkness,
deliberately affected a most ecstatic air : his eyes
turned upward under the heavy peak of his cap
and sought his native skies as the tired horses
plodded forward.

"Beyond the Hills of Gold," he said, "you
will see these mortal beasts transformed, for my
Father when He gave them to me gave them
also wings, which they spread with the first rays
of the morning; then shall your chariot also be
turned into pure fire, and we will mount the
skies."

The lawyer prided himself upon his knowledge
of men and his rapidity of decision. He had
seen things like this in the courts. It was really
most unfortunate in the middle of the night . . .
but there were ways of dealing with it.

" Monsieur the Prince-Postilion," he said, with
profound deference in his tone, " I knew very
well when I watched you mounting that you
were not of earthly kind. I might have guessed
that such as you would take me to the Blessed
Realms. But since you did not tell me so in
plain terms, why, I have come quite ill-accoutred
and unprovided for that signal honour and for
the Palace of the Skies. My clothes are drenched ;
I am fatigued ; I have no change to speak of. I

THE GIRONDIN. m

would not dare to enter the glories you propose
to me until I am a little better groomed. Will
you not, therefore, of your courtesy reach me
the highroad again by the next turning? When
we make Mirambeau, I have friends there who
will put me into a proper suit of clothes, that
I may continue my journey with you on to
glory. There is a road," he added tentatively,
"whereby we can reach the Land of the Blessed
through Mirambeau ; it is a shorter road."

"The Mirambeau to which we go," said Bou-
troux very gravely, " is another and a better
Mirambeau, where the Bright Ones walk in
peace that serve my Father." The horses went
dumbly forward.

" I have always heard," answered the lawyer
patiently, and with a mild, intelligent look, very
sympathetic, and as though he quite understood
the business — "I have always heard that the road
to the Celestial City branches off about half a
league from Mirambeau, beyond the square at the
sign of The Pig That Spins."

Boutroux shook his head decisively. " You
are quite wrong," he said with quiet firmness.
"That is one road, but it is a long way round.
I have promised," said he, "this very night to
carry you into the Kingdom." Then changing

ii2 THE GIRONDIN.

his tone suddenly to one of the utmost ferocity,
he added in a scream : " Bound and delivered !
Do you understand? Fast bound!" He mut-
tered fiercely, " And delivered — gagged."

He glared at his wretched fare as he said
this, dropped his eyes again, and changing
as suddenly back again to an extreme gentle-
ness, he almost whispered, "Are you a lawyer,
sir?"

The passenger bethought him of a method
which he had found very useful in a past crisis
with a client whom he tamed.

"Yes, I am," he answered loudly and firmly,
" and I can make you answer for your foolery ! "

"A lawyer!" crooned the young man in a
happy and inspired voice — "a lawyer ! The
Man of Sin ! " Then he looked up and nodded
affirmatively and gaily : " It's what I wanted !
You're the one " — his voice rose — "and you must
get there bound and delivered: sealed, bound, and
delivered ! "

For a quarter of an hour nothing further was
said upon either side. Boutroux from time to
time roared, laughed, and cursed to himself. The
horses, too fatigued to canter or even to trot,
wearily pulled the chaise along the now sandy
road of the upland ; there was nothing but black

THE GIRONDIN. 113

and wholly silent night all round. Then the
lawyer tried another ruse.

" Monsieur the Postilion," he said severely, " I
am not worthy to enter that Kingdom. There is
in Mirambeau a priest who will absolve me, and
when I am shrived I will continue the journey
with you."

Boutroux shouted to him without turning
round, —

" Do not talk to me of Priests ; we will not
hear of them in my Kingdom. A great fate is
offered you, and you must take it whether or
no. Besides which " — and here his voice suddenly
rose again — " you are to be bound and delivered :
I promised that ! Oh ! " he ended, smacking his
lips, "you will be all the choicer served up in
the midst of your sins."

"Monsieur the Postilion," said the lawyer,
saying this time what was undoubtedly true, " I
am in your hands."

He rapidly began to cast about for safety.
There was, no escape by wheedling or coaxing:
he must get help from outside. He held his
tongue, therefore, and as the chaise slowly rolled
forward he waited for the dawn.

From early youth Boutroux had known how
great an aid it was to the fatigue of travel to

1 14 THE GIRONDIN.

indulge in song ; during the next league and
more of that slow progress, therefore, he sang.

Into snatches of tavern songs which were famil-
iar to him, and some of which his unhappy fare
recognised, he interpolated glorious gusts of pro-
phecy— fierce, chaunted denunciations of the rich,
little dancing refrains and visions of a world to
come. From these in turn he would relieve
himself by a loud whistling and occasionally by
a well-chosen burst of maniacal laughter. After
each of these he did not neglect to turn his
face fiercely over his right shoulder, unlip a row
of white teeth, and mutter at the man of law,
" Bound and delivered ; mind that ! Trussed
like a fowl, — and the choicer for your sins ! "

So he continued, working his instrument of
fear, until at last far off upon the plain a very
distant twinkling light threatened human habita-
tion and danger. He drew rein and halted.

The wretched beasts shook and shivered though
the damp night was warm ; a low and eerie wind
blew in the scant trees which were here planted
in a group by the roadside. Boutroux stiffly and
deliberately dismounted.

" It is here," he said simply, " that I am to wait
until the Messengers of the Kingdom meet us
with the dawn." He lowered his head as he

THE GIRONDIN. 115

spoke thus, but kept his eyes lifted, fixed with
a dreadful glare upon his victim, and made with
his hands the firm gesture of a man who ties knots
in cords and binds a prisoner.

"You are right," said the lawyer patiently; "I
see the lights of their advance. I believe they are
coming towards us. It might be wiser to go
forward perhaps ; it would be more courteous
to greet them so."

" You are wrong ! " said Boutroux decidedly,
standing at his horses' heads, stiffly and in an
expectant attitude. " It is against the rules. We
have no rule or custom more observed in our
society," he added in a louder voice, "than to
wait at this sacred spot for orders ; it is the gate
of the Kingdom."

" I see," said the lawyer ; " I understand."

For a good half-hour the pair remained there
facing each other, the lawyer seated in his chaise
with folded arms, flattering himself that with the
day he would know how to deal even with such
a case as this, Boutroux humming occasionally
little snatches of songs, and then falling into
silence or crooning happy prophecies of a delight-
ful land, or describing in awful phrases the tortures
that await wicked men.

In the east, to which the horses' bowed and

n6 THE GIRONDlN.

weary heads were turned, a faint glimmer of
day began to be apparent. At first you could
not tell whether it were not a mere paling of
the stars or a glimmer of mist that was drifting
before them ; but the light rose and grew, it smelt
of morning, and very soon they were both of
them aware of the dawn. They lapsed into a
complete silence and watched it, each in his
different mood.

When it was light enough for Boutroux to see
the face of his companion he watched it narrowly,
and perceived him to be exceedingly afraid.

The lawyer had got down from the chaise and
was pacing backwards and forwards, slapping his
hands upon his shoulders to keep warm in the
chill of the dawning, and waiting until a some-
what broader day should enable him to take
his measures. Had he been but a trifle more
courageous, he would have closed with the lunatic ;
but he was just not courageous enough, and that
madman kept him steadily fixed with his eyes.

Under the growing light the landscape was now
clear. Hedgeless fields, of stubble and crop alter-
nately, stretched out infinitely upon every side.
The lawyer stood apart with folded arms and
glanced anxiously over those fields. The dis-
tant single light still glowed, a yellow patch, in

THE GIRONDIN. 117

the window of a farmhouse a mile away, and
sure enough, two men and a woman, with the
implements of labour carried over their shoulders,
were proceeding from it towards the harvest
land.

" I think," said the lawyer tentatively, watching
the effect of his words — " I think these are the
messengers of your Father ? "

" I have no doubt," answered Boutroux in a
low, grave, and reverent voice ; " 1 know them,
and they will soon be here."

" It is only reasonable," said the lawyer, " that
I should meet them." He began the first few
steps towards the fields, tremulously, not know-
ing how the move might strike the cunning of
his ravisher. He was overjoyed to find that
his escape was approved. And just as he got
out of earshot he heard Boutroux's loud tone
telling him with decision to announce the ad-
vent of the young Heir with his Winged
Horses, his Man of Sin, and his Chariot of Fire.

The lawyer was not accustomed to damp
fields even upon a light soul ; he was not in a
mood to negotiate them easily. He pressed forward
feverishly over the six or seven hundred yards
that separated him from succour : he did not
dare cry out until many minutes had passed,

n8 THE GIRONDIN.

and until he was not only within hail of the
peasants, but nearer to them than to his very
formidable postilion. When he judged that
such action was safe, he cried out at the top of
his voice for help.

The group of peasants stopped ; they saw
the post-chaise, the official uniform of the
postilion's distant figure ; they remembered that
the law compelled them to lend re-mounts for
a breakdown, and without a moment's hesita-
tion they turned and ran in an opposite direc-
tion, lest such a sacrifice should be required of
them. After them ran the lawyer, and as a
stern chase is a long one, it was perhaps an-
other quarter of an hour before his frenzied
appeals reached them in any understandable
shape. When they saw that something more
than an ordinary breakdown was toward, they
turned and awaited him. He came up with
them. He was haggard with the experience of
that dreadful night, drenched, most unhappy,
and almost breaking down with physical fatigue;
the clods were heavy on his thin, buckled shoes,
and in general he presented that lamentable
spectacle of a well-to-do man in distress — a
spectacle always intensely agreeable to the poorer
classes, but more especially delightful when they

THE GIRONDIN. 119

see a chance to profit by it. As he came up to
them, he panted out, —

" Gentlemen, I implore you ! Madame, I
implore you ! A dreadful thing has happened :
a man has gone mad ! "

They looked at him stolidly, and did not
answer.

"Gentlemen," he said again, "I implore you
in Christian charity ! Madame, a man has gone
mad ! It is but your duty to help me bind him
and to restore him to his people ! "

" What man ? " said the leading peasant sus-
piciously. The lawyer had now come up with
them, and was standing face to face.

" My driver ! " he continued, gasping. " He
has gone mad, and calls himself a son of
heaven ; and he has landed me in this dreadful
place ! 1 must require your help. I must
require it in the name of the law. People of
importance await me to-day in Niort."

" Oh, there's nothing dreadful about our place,"
said the woman shrewishly ; " you must be a
little more civil in your speech. We are not
in the time of the lords, remember7^~~She
looTced "at. fum suspiciously. "What brought
you here ? "

"That chaise," the lawyer answered foolishly

120 THE G1ROND1N.

enough, "that accursed chaise, and its devil of
a driver."

The peasant whom he had first addressed watched
him for a moment in silence. " I see nothing in
your story," he said brusquely, and noting with
suspicion the crumpled broadcloth of the wealthier
man. " It's you that seems a little unsettled. If
there has been a breakdown your postilion will
know how to find help : it is his business."

" You do not understand," said the lawyer ;
" he is mad ! he is unfortunately run mad !
He called me the Man of Sin."

"Well, there is a method in his madness,"
said the peasant with a grin, " and he seems to
be taking a better course than you for finding
proper succour." He pointed with his finger
over his interlocutor's shoulder. The lawyer
turned round, and at once began waving his
arms in frenzy and shouting, for what he saw
was this : the chaise standing, horseless and
alone upon the way, and very far off upon
the edge of the countryside, just turning into
a wood that fringed the horizon, the postilion
upon his mount, with the led horse following.
Even at that distance he could see that the led
horse went reluctantly, wearied beyond measure
with such a series of madcap adventures.

THE GIRONDIN. 121

A moment later, the unhappy lawyer had no
occasion now to continue his shouting and his
gestures. The insane postilion had disappeared
into the woods, and he was there with the
peasants in the bare plain alone.

How he bargained with them for a mount
to take him to the nearest post upon the high-
road, how they fleeced him, how he threatened
vengeance, how upon that account other men,
labouring in the fields, surrounded him and
showed the new temper of democracy, how het
was compelled to jaesac, that —he—had, no title,
but was an honest patriot, and how at las£— atr
the cost of all the ready"money upon him — he
obtained a very stubborn old she-donkey and
a cow to pull his vehicle back to Etaudiers,
would be of entertainment to any history con-
cerning his adventures, but they have nothing to
do with Boutroux, who was by this time in
the depths of the high wood, and for the
moment saved.

CHAPTER VII.

In which a Sack of Charcoal is taken
and a Girl is left.

"DOUTROUX'S vague knowledge of the country
told him that he might not be far from
Chiersac. Once well into the high wood (for the
earthen country road soon became a wandering
track therein) he dismounted and patted his poor
mount upon the neck.

" It is a thousand pities," he said, fondling him,
" that you should have to suffer so much for me !
But what would you ? Men in necessity ill-use
their own kind, let alone d umb brutes. I have no
oats for you," he added sadly, as the two patient
beasts stretched out their heads towards him, and
one of them took a gentle bite at his sleeve, " but
there's plenty of grass."

He mercifully took the bits from their mouths
and strapped them by the buckle to the rings
of the harness. He saw that the loops of the

THE GIRONDIN. 123

traces were tied up high, so that the leather should
not drag and hamper the animals in their going ;
he loosened the girth of the saddle on the near
horse to give him ease ; he slipped the irons up,
so that if he felt inclined to roll he should do
himself no harm. And having done these things
he made his horses a little speech, saying, —

" Good horses, I am an exile ; and I must
confess it to you who have never told lies in your
life, that within the last twenty-four hours 1 have
told some hundreds of lies : but," he added,
sighing, " it was fate ! " And as he said it one
of the horses neighed.

" Precisely," continued Boutroux ; " that is the
way I feel about it too. There are times when a
man must lie. And now, horses, I must dismiss
you. Do not follow me. You may have observed
from my actions perhaps (though you horses are
stupid beasts) that I was not keen on being followed
during these last few hours of my life. Go," he
concluded gently, "find your way home. Even
if you cannot do it you will be stolen by some
other of my human sort ; and since horses are
always serviceable, you will be more sure of food
than 1."

He strode into the underwood. For a yard or
two the poor brutes made as though to follow him.

i24 THE GiRONDiN.

" I hate to do it, but with sheer stupidity genius
itself cannot argue ! " he thought, and lifting a
piece of dead wood that lay there he threw it at
his former friends. Both looked astonished, one
a little hurt. They turned from him, and browsing
the coarser grass beneath the trees, made vaguely
for home.

The sun had risen, the heat was increasing.
The insects of; August buzzed drowsily in the
wood, and content came upon the young man
again as it had come upon him when he had landed
from the boat upon the northern shore of the
Gironde twenty-four hours before. His fatigue
also came upon him so strongly that he fell,
stupidly happy, under the low branch of a short
oak, and dropped at once into a profound and
satisfying sleep.

As Boutroux slept he dreamed. He dreamed a
curious dream — vivid and yet mixed with memory.

It seemed to him in his dream that he was still
in that wood, but that the wood was home ; and
that in some way it was upon the fringe of a
kingdom, and that the kingdom belonged to his
people and his line. He thought he saw himself
going through the wood for hours and hours, and
as he went he spoke to beasts that passed him —

THE GIRONDIN. 125

wild deer and the birds of the greenwood, and
little rabbits that were not afraid, and squirrels in
the branches, and now and then a horse grazing
at random. And it seemed to him that these
answered him in various manners — pleased or
unpleased, shy, pert, grave, humorous, angered,
or loving — as might men. It seemed to him that
he was conscious as he walked — that he divined
very well — how every step he took he was taking
deeper and deeper into some kingdom of his own,
and yet farther and farther away from a dear home
and things he knew. He felt like an exile who
happened also to be upon a pilgrimage.

Just as he was coming out of that wood of his
dream and half saw, or thought he saw, a very
glorious landscape beyond, in which, in some odd
way, was resumed all that he had lost and all that
he should find, he stirred, his mind lost ease ; that
landscape resolved itself into a mist and confusion
of sunlight shining through green boughs. The
outlines of those boughs grew precise, and he
woke suddenly to this world. He sat bolt upright
and stared with seeing eyes, first at the real things
about him, then inwards at his fate. He began to
revolve the same.

"Boutroux," said he gravely, "in the next lie
you tell you must either lie freely as should a

126 THE G1RONDIN.

citizen in the third year of Liberty, or con-
strainedly : for if you are dressed anyhow — even
as a pauper — you will be free to lie freely ; but
if you are dressed as a postilion you will be
constrained to lie constrainedly, having to lie up
to your clothes as it were, as do dukes and politi-
cians and patriots, and scum of that kind.
Boutroux, since lie you mus.t, I prefer you should
lie as a free man ; therefore you must get rid
of this postilion's garb. Boutroux," he added,
" there are some who would be puzzled what to
do, well knowing that men naked are fallen upon
by the guard and thrust into prison, knowing
also that men must see their fellow men in villages
or towns if they are to live, and knowing that in
such places are guards especially to be found —
game-keepers and police, and chance patrols and
authorities. A foolish man, Boutroux, might
think it impossible to get out of such a dilemma,
either to go as a postilion or to go naked — and
either is fatal. But you, Boutroux, have more
mastery, I hope, over your fate ! "

He first took off his coat and carefully turned
it inside out. He was delighted to note that the
lining was black. He next pulled off his postilion's
knee-breeches, turned them inside out, and found
the lining of those to be black also. " That," he

THE GIRONDIN. 127

said gravely, "is as it should be." The black coat
and the black knee-breeches (as they now were)
he carefully donned again, and began to consider
his next act. He bethought him of his cap.

" To wear no headgear is eccentric, but no man
is imprisoned for it," he said, "while to wear a
postilion's cap is to be a postilion."

From the pocket of his coat, now turned inside
out against his shirt, he drew a matchbox and
tinder. With these he lit a little fire of dry twigs,
whereon most thoughtfully he burned his cap ;
and as it burned he said to it, —

" Not because you are a heretic, my cap, do I
burn you — for the Rights of Man have done away
with all that — but because, you will not conform
with the rest of your society. Who can wear a
yellow postilion's cap with black clothes ? Burn,
and may God have mercy on your soul ! "

His spurs he unbuckled, and put them into
that inner pocket. Then taking the ash of the
little fire whereon he had immolated his head-
gear, he deliberately smeared it upon his face and
hands, and quenching a coal of it in a puddle
of dirty water hard by, he rubbed the black
streaks of the char upon his forehead and round
his mouth. " If I had a mirror," he murmured,
"I would make it as it should be, and every

128 THE GIRONDIN.

stroke would tell. But as it is I must do what
bad artists do, and must trust to blur." With
these words he rubbed hard at the streaks he
had drawn, so as to mix them with the remaining
ashes on his face ; he was careful to blacken
round the eyes especially, that the whites might
show clear, and round the lips that the teeth
might be equally apparent.

"In this way," he said, "men know a char-
coal burner." And where a speck of white
thread appeared upon the seams of the black
lining which he now wore inside out, he rubbed
it with the same charred stick to darken it.

Having done all these things it occurred to
him that the old proverb "Who sleeps dines"
was especially true in this, that he who wakes
is hungry. He had not eaten since his snack
of the evening before, and he was a little puzzled
to know how a charcoal-burner could earn a
living where, for all he could see, no charcoal
had ever been made since the beginning of the
world ; but he noted that the wood about him
had beech trees in it, and as he sniffed the air
he thought he caught a smell of smouldering.
So he went forward in hope and faith for charcoal-
burners' heaps.

" It is one thing," thought Boutroux, " to cover

THE GIRONDIN. 129

one's tracks, and it is another thing to earn one's
living ; but to do the two together is well-nigh
impossible."

So musing he pushed through the undergrowth,
following the ancient rule that one should on
a high land always go down-hill if one would
seek man, till in half an hour or so he came
suddenly out of that dense growth on to a sunlit
meadow where a stream trickled from the damp-
ness of the wood which he had just left.

Hardly was he twenty yards on, over the
pleasant grass, when a young girl, fresh, beautiful,
and strong, with her pail balanced in her right
hand and her left arm akimbo, called to him
from a gate far off, —

" Charcoal-burner, we shall need a sack ! "

"God is in it," said Boutroux piously. "I
thought as much : they do make charcoal in
this wood. It will go hard if I make none with
them." He shouted roughly back, " When,
Beauty ? "

" Never if you talk like that," she said ; " but
before night if you would wish to see my father's
money, you may tell your dirty gang."

He smiled at her with the whiteness of his
teeth upon his blackened face ; she smiled at
him, and he went back into the forest.

i3o THE GIRONDIN.

"Heaven," said he as he got into the high
wood again, "who has provided charcoal-burners
unexpectedly, and a wench and her father for
customers, will not allow this sparrow to fall
unnoticed to the ground. But from what I
know of Heaven it will not teach me how to
burn charcoal ; and even if it did, for all I know
the process may be one of weeks — and though
I am willing to steal, yet, God help me ! I have
no sack."

It is related of Ulysses that the extremity
of evil was but a spur to him, and opportunity a
gate of delivery. It shall be related of Boutroux
that whether it was his youth or his good fortune
or the gods that smile on exiles, something would
always suggest to him what a man should do ;
and so it was upon that day and in that hour,
for he said to himself, " Since there are charcoal-
burners, how should they be found ? By their
folly and the folly of other men, as human things
are always found ! " And having come to that
conclusion, and seeing that the girl had gone
indoors again, he crept carefully under the cover
of the wood towards a more distant farm which
lay upon the edge of the greenery, and when
he got there he saw a young man digging with
a spade in the garden-patch, and he said to him, —

THE GIRONDIN. 131

"I've come for the money for that sack of
charcoal."

"We've had no sack of charcoal," said the
lad roughly. "Who sent you ? "

" My mates," said Boutroux as roughly.

"You can go back and tell your fools of
mates that they have mistaken the house, or
that you have." And the boy went on digging.
But as he plunged his spade vigorously into the
earth he was inspired to add, "Besides which,
they have no right to be burning at the White
Cross, for that is village land."

"It is not," said Boutroux in the challenging
tone of one who had studied the ground and
known the spot for years.

"It is," said the young man, looking up and
sweating in that heat, his eyes angry under his
wet brows, " It's village land two hundred toises
from the edge of the wood all round. The
White Cross marks it, and they're on this side
of it I "

"In a manner of speaking," said Boutroux
cautiously, " they are."

"Well," said the other triumphantly, "there
you are ! Pace the path and see if it's not within
the two hundred toises ! I'll come with you."
And as he said it he came through the wicket

1 32 THE GIRONDIN.

of the hedge across which they had been talking
and began measuring strides along a widening
path through the underwood.

" I was only joking," said Boutroux hurriedly.
" I know it's village land. I didn't mean to rile
you," he added good-humouredly, " but I did
think it was here I was to come for the money."

"Well, it isn't," said the young man a little
mollified and turning back to his digging. "It's
in hell for all I know, but it isn't here."

"It must be somewhere about," muttered
Boutroux, and he disappeared down the path.

It led him, as he had expected, to an open
clearing, and in that clearing he saw the stack
of faggots, the little hut of turf, the cut stumps,
and the signs of past dead fires which mark the
burning of charcoal in a wood.

How often in another day, as a child walking
with his nurse in the woods of home near the
city, he had seen such camps, but never had
he wondered till now exactly how the trade was
run. Nor did he continue to wonder about
that or to care about it when once his eyes had
fallen upon a large sack full of that which was
to him at the moment more precious than gold,
but unfortunately it served as a pillow for a
huge and sleeping man.

THE GIRONDIN. 133

This giant was snoring in the noonday rest :
one arm was under his head to shield his face
from the rough edges of the charcoal in the
sack, the other lay listless along his side. Beside
him a leathern bottle of wine half emptied, and
a loaf which had formed his meal, lay at random.

"My dear grandmother," said Boutroux in his
heart, "who died three years ago, used always
to tell me that I should choose business before
pleasure, and she would add, 'where you think
you have an equal choice so far as duty is con-
cerned, take the more difficult course and you
will be right.' It is therefore," he sighed, "my
business first to shift that sack, and only if I
accomplish that successfully shall I have any right
to steal this wine and bread. It is by attention to
things in their right order that men prosper."

There is a game called spillikins, in which
a man wins by moving a number of delicate
ivory spills intertwined one with another, and by
moving them in such a manner that he separates
them without shaking any one by the movement
of its neighbour. This, on a larger scale, was
Boutroux's task.

He began wisely enough by giving the charcoal
sack a vigorous kick so that the sleeper's head
bumped heavily against the ground. His snore

134 THE GIRONDIN.

was suddenly interrupted and caught in a violent
spasm within the convolutions of his head ; he
gasped, squirmed as though he would wrestle
with the ground, then oddly sighed again, rolled
on his back, and let his great arms spread out
in the shape of a cross ; his head fell back
stark against the earth, and in a moment was
snoring again.

Boutroux looked at him with wonderment.
" If you had woken," he said, " you would have
compelled me to yet another lie. ... I have
carried nothing heavy, though I have often
boasted of it and lied in clubs. But you, my
charcoal sack, be light to me. I should imagine
from what I know of the stuff that it wasn't
a patch upon wheat for weight."

Saying this he very silently and gingerly
crouched down, slung the burden upon his
shoulder, and finding it bearable began to stagger
off, when suddenly he remembered something.

"A man does not live by charcoal alone," he
muttered.

He crept back in that noontide heat and over
the coarse grass without a sound, avoiding every
twig, and holding his very breath for silence :
he lifted the huge round loaf and the gourd of
wine most tenderly as though they were young

THE GIRONDIN. 135

children whom he loved, got his sack upon his
back again, with his free left hand, and made
down the path towards the hamlet and the two
farms. He had heard that labouring men slept
at noon for but a short while : nevertheless he
halted upon the edge of the wood, hastily ate
a slice of the bread and drank a gulp of the
wine, recognised when he had satisfied himself
that it was wiser to restore them, went back
and laid them where he had found them ; re-
turned, took up his charcoal sack again, and
bore it across the meadow towards the gate
where he had seen the young girl in her beauty
and her strength, holding the pail balanced with
her arm akimbo.

" Now I could have drawn that," said Boutroux,
looking at the now empty landscape, the gate,
the wall, the small white farmhouse, and the
falling open valley below. "I could have drawn
it, but if I had, what good would that have
been to me ? It is my business to deliver this
sack of charcoal to the farmer. He needs the
sack and I the money. Nay, he has positively
ordered the sack, and I have been at very great
pains to obtain it. This is commerce : this is
as it should be : this is exchange. Here are
two citizens satisfied."

136 THE GIRONDIN.

With this he had come up to the house, and
he knocked at the door of it, slipped down his
sack upon the big threshold stone, leant negli-
gently against the door-post and waited until
they should open from within. While he so
waited he considered to himself how excellent
had been his meal ; and he made a rule which
he then determined firmly to keep the whole
of his life, which was this : never to take wine
if he could help it without bread, and still more
surely never to take bread if he could possibly
help it without wine.

He heard steps within : the door opened, and
in the cool dark room which it disclosed he saw
the girl who had been the cause of all this
labour, and from whom he hoped to receive its
corresponding reward.

CHAPTER VIII.

In which a Sack of Charcoal is left
and a Girl is taken.

~f~*HE girl came forward from within the house
to the door ; her beauty was veiled by the
darkness of the room, her upstanding figure was
free, and Boutroux said within his heart that
the circumstance of man was unworthy to the
dignity of love. He regretted for a moment
the charcoal with which he had rubbed his face,
and the work upon which he chanced by fate
to be engaged. He stood looking at her with a
smile which under other circumstances would have
been half ironical and half adventurous, but which
appearing as a white row of teeth framed in that
new black face of his was startling rather than subtle.
"Why the devil can't you carry the sack on
your shoulders ? " she said by way of greeting.
"Have I cleaned that threshold stone for no-
thing ? Great brute ! "

5a

138 THE GIRONDIN.

Boutroux did not understand, but he under-
stood when she put into his hand a silver piece
in earnest of payment.

" Pick it up ! " she shouted like a young
commander ; " pick it up, and go round to the
back."

He hoisted the sack upon his shoulder again,
making as though it were a great burden, and
awaited her orders, bent beneath his burden.
But he affected strength by looking up brightly
as he did so, his white teeth gleaming again
against the darkness of his dirty skin, and his
eyes the brighter for such a background.

"You're not one of those who brought it
before," she said.

"Not I," he answered richly. "I am plying
three trades just now : to the one I am fast
becoming used, which is wandering ; to the
second, which is charcoal-burning, I am but a
very new hand ; the third I have known and
practised most thoroughly for now three years,
and I thought myself a master at it," he con-
tinued, swinging the bag over his other shoulder
by way of a rest, and drawing himself up so
that she marvelled how he could bear the weight
of it in such an attitude. " I thought myself a
master at it ; but as one lives one learns. . . ."

THE GIRONDIN. 139

" What is that third trade of yours ? " she said.

" It is a form of hunting," he answered ; " it
is a kind of hunting in which the hunter him-
self is always wounded, and even the hare does
not usually escape a wound."

"That," said the girl as she strode by his
side, short - kilted, and already amused, "is a
proverb of your village. We do not know it
here."

" I shall be happy to expound its full meaning in
good time," said Boutroux from beneath his sack.

The girl said nothing in reply, but abruptly :
" My father keeps his charcoal in a barn he
has. I will take you to that barn." And she
did so, but not by the shortest road.

" It is a proverb of my village," he answered,
after thinking a little while, "and 1 myself have
never quite understood it ; we have it in another
form. We say that in that hunting the joy is
all at the beginning, before the chase is up,
and the sadness all at the end, and the worse
for successful ending. But we say that either
way there is no weariness in that hunting."

"You learnt that proverb also, I think," she
said with a good laugh, "in your own country.
We have no such proverb here."

" Well then," said he, forgetting the path and

i4o THE GIRONDIN.

everything but her, " have you this proverb, 'In
that hunting the quarry knows the hunter better
than the hunter knows the quarry ' ? "

" No," said she.

" Or have you this : ' The quarry fears the
huntsman, but the huntsman fears the quarry
more ' ? "

" No," said she again stubbornly, " this would
seem to be spoken of the hunting of wolves
and of wild boars, which doubtless swarm in
that wild bad land of yours. For no other
beast turns upon him that hunts or tries to
rend him."

"Young lady," said Boutroux with great
courtesy, as he shifted his sack again to the
other shoulder a little more wearily, "first let
me tell you that the path is getting long ; and
secondly, let me tell you that the quarry of
which I speak does turn and rend the hunter.
It is its nature so to do."

" But is the chase not wounded too ? " she said.

" Oh, child," he answered, sighing, " have I
not told you that both are wounded ? Hunter
and hunted too ! "

"Never yet," she said in a lower tone, "has
any charcoal-burner called me a child."

"And never yet," he answered in a tone yet

THE GIRONDIN. 141

lower than hers, "has any child, however beauti-
ful, called me a charcoal-burner."

They had come to the end of a field, where
a slovenly gate led the path round and through
to other paddocks of the croft. The moment
was propitious for a halt in their little journey.
The sun in its early afternoon decline was at
once hot and beneficent. She looked at him
under the shade of her great hair, and asked
him whether the burden were not heavy, and
whether he would not rest a moment.

" It is very heavy ! " he said, and slipped it
to the ground as if it were indeed of a great
weight ; and then he sat down beside it, his
legs stretched out, his back resting upon the
burden, and his eyes looking up at hers as she
stood above him.

" Charcoal-burner," she said, " I have known
no charcoal-burners come to my father's house,
though they come so often during the charcoal-
burning days, who seemed so little fitted to
their trade as you. Now, if you have some-
thing that you are not saying and that you
would wish to say, say it, and 1 will keep
faith ; for I know very well that this forest is
sometimes a refuge in days like ours."

When she had said this she watched him

i4a THE G1RONDIN.

with a little smile, looking for a new look in
his eyes ; and he, putting on an appearance of
due sadness, said, —

"Young lady, it is not one hour since I met
you, and yet the thing 1 have to say is very
near my heart."

She went a little further off, and leaned against
the gatepost, still looking down at him.

"Charcoal-burner," she said, "you are not a
charcoal-burner at all, for you speak like the
men in the cities."

" Will you hear what I have to say ? "

" Certainly," said she, half humbly.

" It is this," he answered. " I have now been
loose and flying, not without fear, for a day
and for half a day, and in all that time and in
all this heat I have had but three hours of
sleep, and one bottle of good and two sub-
sequent gulps of raw wine ; and I do most
earnestly beseech you by my patron Saint, St.
George as he once was — for God knows his
status nowadays — that you will bring me that
cool refreshment and drink which your kind
face should promise me."

When she had gazed at him for a little while,
smiling less strongly, but not wholly ceasing to
smile, she said at last : " I will bring it you,

THE GIRONDIN. 143

though you have burned no charcoal — no, nor
anything, I think, in all your life but things you
had no right to burn."

She turned her back upon him and strode off
resolutely across the meadows in a direction she
knew, while Boutroux lay there, not unhappily,
and considered the largeness of the world.

" It is evident," he murmured to himself, " that
proper adventure and a change in things, large
acquaintance and refreshment of every kind, lie
open before the feet of any man whatsoever that
chooses to travel. I could have wished," he
added silently in his heart, " that my occasion for
travel had been a little more genial, for every man
has roots to him, and mine are all dragged out of
the earth to-day, for ever. But Lord, the large-
ness of the world ! "

As he so pondered in that happy and mellowing
sunlight, he glanced drowsily here and there,
through half-shut lids, at the meadows and the
highland hedges and the more distant woods. It
was very still, a crowd of midges was buzzing over
the brookland below, and already the grasshoppers
had begun their loud chirping in the roots of the
aftermath. Nature was full and pleased ; he was
content to fix those drowsy, half-shut eyes of his
upon an edge of the near woodland where a bird

i44 THE GIRONDIN.

and its mate walked and hopped oddly together,
picking for sustenance in the leaf mast, and helping
one another. The one walked proudly, the other
with seduction ; the one was brave, he thought, in
the eyes of its mate, and its mate, he imagined, in
the eyes of the brave one, beautiful. Nay, the
beauty of the one and the courage of the other, in
some way communicated themselves to his mind :
he blessed the two birds and wished them happi-
ness. But even as he did so, some movement of
his, or some approach of another animal in the
underwood, frightened them, and first the male,
glancing round by way of guard, gave a little cry,
then his mate rose, and both together took the
broad heaven and flew.

" It was a pretty sight," thought Boutroux,
"and now they are off to the sky." He would
have carried his thought further had not that girl
with whose conversation he had so lately been
filled, appeared near by with a flagon in either
hand. She had come through some opening in
the hedge and he had not noticed her.

He rose to his feet with some gallantry, though
a little stiffly after such adventures, and tried to
take her burden from her. She put both flagons
resolutely behind her back, and said : " How dp
you know that they are yours ? "

THE G1RONDIN. 145

"I do not know," he said, "but I am very
thirsty."

" Why, then," she answered pleasantly, " you
shall be satisfied. Have you no mug or glass ? "

" I have none," he replied with great courtesy of
inclination and of gesture, "and if you will not
drink first I will not drink at all."

" My mother told me once," said the girl, " that
women must not drink wine."

" There is something in that," said Boutroux ;
"your mother was a wise woman. And what did
she say of water ? "

" Oh, one may drink water ; but I am not thirsty.
Nevertheless, since you need companionship, I will
drink both wine and water with you."

When she had said this, she looked in his face,
and in her soul she felt that the lines of it, and the
strength of the eyes, and the laughter in the mouth
were something that she would know and need.
She drank from the one flagon and from the
other in the Spanish fashion, and handed them
to him.

" From which did you drink last ? " he asked.

" From the water," said she.

" Then I will drink from that first," he answered,
taking a long draught therefrom. " And now " —
catching the wine from her before she was aware

146 THE GIRONDIN.

— " 1 will drink the wine in order to remember
your name by it."

"But 1 have not told you my name," she
said.

" Nor need you," he answered, " for I know it
already, and from now onwards I shall know it all
my life."

When they had so drunk wine and water
together in a sort of sacramental way, they said
nothing more. He lifted his sack again, caring
nothing whether it seemed light or heavy, nor
willing to make believe before her or to deceive
her any longer. But he went forward through
the further small paddock along the path towards
a rude strong hut of hewn logs that stood there,
wherein was a store of charcoal, and in the dark
recesses of it a sort of pen where a beast might
stand, and in the pen dry fern litter that smelled
well, and a little straw scattered over it, clean and
good. He opened the sack and poured out its
contents upon the charcoal heap.

" There," said he, " is the end of my tale."

" You shall be further paid for it," she said.

" You can pay me best," he answered, " with a
little lodging, if it is safe that I should lodge here.
The weather is warm, and, if you will believe me,
I need concealment."

THE G1R0NDIN. 147

She asked him suddenly : " What is your
name ? "

" It is odd that you should ask me my name,"
he answered at once, and in quite another tone,
" for your name I should never have asked. Have
I not told you that I should never forget your
name for all my life ? "

" But you do not know it," she answered again
in a low voice, and very troubled.

" Oh yes," said he, speaking in the manner of
the river Garonne when it runs at night with so
sincere and so profound a noise, a noise so slight
and yet proclaiming so great a depth and volume ;
" I know your name. After a few moments I
knew it for ever and ever."

This young woman, full of health and of the
woods, in her eighteenth year as I have heard, a
companion to the lads of the village, and an
exchanger of taunts with the charcoal-burners of
the forest, the stay of her father's house (for he
was a widower), and the nurse and the upbringer
of children younger than herself, had a face
designed for some great moment.

She had never known how swiftly the gods may
descend and strike, nor in what manner revelations
come ; nor could she tell how little these great
things may have to do with a complexion or an

i48 THE GIRONDIN.

accident of feature, or with vesture, or with any-
thing at all but the body that men bear and the
soul that makes it all. From that moment in her
poverty she knew as much as ever has been known,
and when she left him she said to him, —

" Whatever you may be, lie there close in con-
cealment ; for I alone of all the household fetch
and carry, and I will feed you, and I will preserve
you. And God deal with me as I deal with you.
You say that you know my name : I do not know
your name, nor will I ask it, friend."

When she had said this she hurriedly left that
hut and took the meadows back towards her home ;
but though she had said that while he knew her
name, she did not know his, yet in her eyes now
was something sprung from him which no length
of years would quite extinguish.

When she had gone, Georges Boutroux in the
hut again considered, but in a very different mood,
the vastness of this world. The place seemed a
prison to him, and, as is the nature of prisons, he
dared not break it. It called for companionship,
as prisons will ; but again, as prisons do, it
suggested only one companionship.

He was very greatly fatigued, he had done more
than a man should do in every way ; he considered
first what relief might be before him, and what

THE GIRONDIN. 149

opportunity for getting clean away. Next, and
more drowsily as he fell back upon the fern litter
and the straw, whether his trick with the char-
coal had yet angered the charcoal-burners' camp,
and whether they also were perhaps upon him.
Lastly, as the good, sleep came down upon him
like a happy mist, he wandered confusedly among
the inward parts of his soul, counting that last
hour and dwelling in it, and forgetting all the wild
dance of the two days. He knew that it was
something newer than ever he had known before.
Then he saw the face and heard the voice so that
it was already the beginning of a dream : he heard
the low voice and he saw the sunburned face that
was the woods and the spirit of them, and he saw
the small hands holding from such arms the
promise of refreshment and of peace. But after
this even the beginnings of his dream left him, and
he fell contentedly into his sleep.

CHAPTER IX.

In "which a Lover finds himself in the Dark.

' I SHE summer night upon the uplands and on
the borders of the woods is cold : there
is dew upon the grass, and in the open sky a
chilliness which even the cattle feel in their byres,
so that they crouch down upon the litter, or, if
they are folded in the open, gather together for
warmth.

But Boutroux was not cold : in that long sleep
of his he knew a great contentment with which
warmth was mingled, and his sleeping and half-
dreaming brain imagined permanent satisfaction.
For many hours he lay thus upon the straw above
the fern litter in the dark refuge of the hut :
when he woke, he woke so refreshed that he
seemed for a moment in a new life ; he re-
membered nothing — but bit by bit the rapid story
of his quarrel, his exile, and his flight returned to
him. He drew himself up upon his soft bed ; he

THE GIRONDIN. 151

found above him a rough and thick but good
covering of wool which some one while he slept
had gently laid there, and new straw heaped
about his feet and knees. It was very early
morning.

Everything smelt of morning, and the grey
quiet light which came through the door of the
shed and through the chinks of its woodwork
proclaimed the hour before the sun. The little
beasts of the woodland and the grass were already
astir ; save for their movement there was no noise.
He raised himself yet further, he found his arm
less stiff; he unfastened the bandage, it came off
easily and the surface of the wound was healed.

"It is wonderful," said Boutroux to himself,
"what contentment and good novelty will do
to a man ! They will close up his very flesh,
and certainly they restore his soul."

Having so thought on the matter, he rose
sharply from the fern litter and the straw, shaking
them about him with a small noise. He coughed
to clear his throat, and he had begun some sort of
little song to cheer him, when he heard a low
" Hush ! " and peering into the darker corner of
the shed before him, he saw there the figure of
his sleeping and his dreams.

She was leaning blotted out in the shadow

152 THE GIRONDIN.

against the wooden wall. Her arms were crossed
upon her firm young breast. Her milking-pails
and the yoke to which they were fastened stood
upon the ground at her feet. The very faint
light, reflected from the bright straw on to her
visage, just barely showed its lineaments ; but
he divined her eyes. She did not speak, but
whispered, —

" Speak low. I have been here waiting for near
an hour, lest you should be betrayed."

Boutroux approached her without any noise.
She uncrossed her arms as he came and clasped
her hands before her. He took her left hand
and kissed it gently, and he thought, even in that
half light, that her colour rose as he lifted his face
to hers.

" There are several who would find you," she
said again in a whisper, "but they cannot guess
where you are, for they have been told nothing
and they believe you to have fled. Only I warn
you : and for that reason I rose while it was yet
dark and came to watch until you were awake.
But I would not waken you, for you suffered from
a great fatigue ; and in your sleep, both in the
night and now, you laughed and were taken with
fever."

" It was you," he said, " who came in the night

THE GIRONDIN. 153

and put this cloth over me against the dampness
and the cold, and it was you who put the straw
about my feet and knees."

" It was I," she answered. " Here we keep
much of the husbandry, and often my pails are
left here for the milking, — so none could wonder."

" Nor do I wonder," he answered, " and I have
better reason than they to understand."

As he said this to her, she lifted one arm a
moment as though to lay it on his shoulder, but
she let it fall again and would not. " Very soon,"
she said, " they will be all astir."

A cock crowed somewhere in the hamlet below ;
he crowed a deep, gay note, full-hearted in his
pride and challenging. In the high farm that was
her father's he was answered shrilly by some young
adventurous rival ; a third in the neighbouring
croft took up the call. As those two heard these
sounds, they heard also the hoofs of horses
moving over the pavement of a stable far off, and
the chink of iron ; and there came the whistling
of a lad on his way to the fields and labour.

"You will stay here," she said. "You must
not move, and you must trust me. I will bring
you food."

"There will never be a time," he said, "that
you may come, whether you bring me food or no,

154 THE GIRONDIN.

but I shall feed. And even when you are not
here, I shall feed in a fashion upon a shade."

She would not answer him. She put the yoke
upon her graceful shoulders so that they were
bent to her labour, she straightened herself and
swung the pails and went out to the field, short-
kilted, walking strongly and with the morning
upon her. He saw her for but a moment as she
passed the door, but almost immediately, as she
left him, there came palely through that same
entry the first ray of the sun ; it bore with it a
sort of miraculous enlivenment and a changing of
all things as it came. And Boutroux thought to
himself again : —

" Undoubtedly these are great days ! " Then
he considered all that she had told him — how she
had told him to lie close and to speak to none,
and how she would visit him again.

An hour later she re-entered, calling carelessly
over her shoulder to companions far off, and saying
that when she had left her pails in the shed she
would rejoin their company. She put down her
burdens swiftly, and came to him where he in-
habited his lonely place, and set before him in a
hurried way a paper wherein there was cold meat
and household bread, dark in colour, and a little
salt.

THE GIRONDIN. 155

" I have no wine," she said in a low voice.

"Be pleased to hear," he answered more de-
liberately, but in a voice as low, "that I cannot
drink wine of a morning, having in my time
drunk more than should be drunk at night ; but
since it is you have brought this meat to me,
there will be wine enough in it, I think, and in the
bread as well."

She was gone immediately, so that none outside
could have wondered at her delay ; and as she
went out she called again to her companions,
saying that the shed was too far a place to
leave the pails in, and for the future she would
borrow a neighbour's barn nearer to their own
byres.

Meanwhile, Boutroux in his hiding all day long
waited for the evening, and was as patient as his
strength permitted him to be.

The sun had fallen to its afternoon : he was
feeling drowsy with such enforced indolence and
secrecy, when, before he was aware of it, she was
at his side again, bringing this time wine with the
bread and meat. She spoke with less content and
more hurriedly than before ; she begged him not
to move nor to make one sound until it should be
dark, for he was in danger ; she promised him
when it was dark to return and to tell him the

156 THE GIRONDIN.

story of his danger. And once more he obeyed
her.

The evening of that day fell : the sounds of
labour retired and were silenced, the grasshoppers
after their loud evening chirping reposed, for the
night chilled them. And Boutroux waited until
it seemed to him that sleep had come down upon
the hamlet and the charcoal-burners, and all the
living things of the woodland and the clearing.
As he so waited, he heard again the step which he
now knew like his own name, and she was by him ;
but she bore nothing save her message.

Her voice, which had been hurried and troubled
when she had last brought him succour, was now
more troubled and more hurried ; the tale she
had to tell him was the tale he knew — for she, too,
knew it now. And as she began to tell him his own
story, coming slowly to it, and hesitating, she held
him once involuntarily, and held him close, to com-
plete her telling of it, and she spoke to him in a
terror which was a great and a proud thing for him
to hear ; for as he felt its source he himself could
not be at all afraid — no, not even of those things
that pursue a soul in darkness. And as for the
pursuit of men — hearing her low voice and
considering her care, he gloried in that peril.

Her speech was halting : she told him the

THE GIRONDIN. 157

last things first, so that he must question her
gently, almost as by caresses. He thought she
trembled, though she was so strong and well-
poised.

" They neither know me nor where I am," he
said.

" Friend," she whispered to him, " you said in
that first speech of ours — which, oh my God, is
surely all my life ago ! — that you were a hunter
at times."

" All men are hunters at times," he said.

" Friend," she said, " when some brave thing is
hunted and the hounds come upon it, not only in
chase but on flank and flank, it goes hard with
that quarry."

"It is the end of it," he answered tenderly,
"or, at any rate, it is the end of that hunting."

" But," she said, with a little sob and laugh at
his perpetually turning her phrase, " this hunting
is no hunting of lovers, and they have you in
chase and on either flank as well, for I will tell
you : — This morning as I left you with the pails
to go milking, I met no one, for the hour was
early, only Peter in the hollow, the son of the
man they call Rich Hamard, who has the main
croft and farms the taxes here. And they say he
has God's curse on him, with which the old

158 THE GIRONDIN.

woman cursed him ten years ago when he bade
the sergeants distrain."

" All that is news to me," said Boutroux, hold-
ing her in the darkness, " and whatever news you
have is as pleasant as the noise of a brook. But
1 learn nothing of my fate."

"He did but salute me then," she continued
in her whispered, halting anxiety, " but when an
hour later I left you, having given you food in
that brief moment, he was waiting with my
companions at the well ; and he said, ' Jolse '
(which is their nickname for my name Joyeuse;
and that is a nickname, for my true name is
Isabel) — c Jo'ise, there are men in this country look-
ing for coin.' "

"That is a thing, my dear," said Boutroux
gently, "that twenty men to my own knowledge
have looked for in their time, and only one or
two now and then have found it."

"Oh, let me tell you," she said, and sighed.
" He said to me threateningly, ' They are looking
for coin.' ' For what coin ? ' said I, roughly. It is
he who comes with a set wooing every Sunday
eve before the Mass and on the eve of the feast
days to sit by the fire ; and he claims to sit
next me, and my father will have it so. Since
it is so, I must treat him lovingly or roughly •

THE GIRONDIN. 159

I treat him roughly, for I will treat him in no
other way."

"You do well," said Boutroux, "to treat all
men roughly ; they are rough, and rough treat-
ment is in the nature of roughness. Friend,
rough on ! "

" Friend," she said, " when he spoke about that
coin I knew what he meant. He meant the
money paid you for the sack of charcoal."

" And why ? . . . And if they do ? . . . It was not
marked," said Boutroux ; " and even if it were
marked, I have it here, and I can bury it — none
can know of that sack or of me, save you
only."

"Friend," she said, "listen. The charcoal-
burners say, and have said it to the Justice, that
they had been robbed of their charcoal. They
missed but that one sack ; of that they complain
less. But they complain most about a purse
in which they kept their common earnings, and
of a fine roll of cloth which one of them had
bought at the Fair. They will have it that a
wandering man deprived them of these things.
One says that he has seen him."

" Then he lies," said Boutroux ; " and that
wandering man took nothing but the charcoal
sack, and took it at a great risk, which paid for

160 THE GIRONDIN.

it. No — wait — he did also take good wine and
doubtful bread. I remember his taking it, for
it was I. But as for the purse, he never heard
of it ; and for the roll of cloth, he would as soon
steal a beech tree or a wolf trap to burden him
upon his going."

"Then," she went on still fevered, "in the
village one and another complains to the Justice
during the day that they have lost this or
that ; and, friend, in a word, they are hunting
for a man."

" See how a hunter can be hunted ! " said
Boutroux. " It is a double world."

"I would have you out by night," she said,
" here and now, although your going would
leave me so that after these few hours all the
rest of my life would be ringing like a steeple
at a dying, with nothing else but the dying of
these few hours. But I cannot have it so, because
there is another thing."

" And what is that ? "

" If I tell you, you will be angry," she answered,
and was silent ; and though he questioned her
and pressed her, she would tell him nothing at
all, nor speak to him for a little while. Then
she said, —

"In the great city there was some one who

THE GIRONDIN. 161

killed a man, and he did it against The People.
They say that they -have traced him to our woods,
and the Commune has been advised by the
Commune of the city, and the Commune of the
city has sent armed men. Now, though you
should go by night, they know you, friend (for
you I think it was that killed the man) ; you
would not traverse this country, which is unknown
to you, at the first dawning, without falling into
some village without disguise, and you would
be caught and held."

"It was I," said Boutroux, "who killed the
man."

He felt the form that he held shrink at those
few words, and for a moment something lifted
in his mind, letting in a light, as it were, upon
his reason, and making him afraid of his own
self. He heard again the first engagement of
steel, and it seemed to him in a sort of lightning
vision something so evil that he would have
no more to do with it than with venom or with
treason. He smelt sulphur in the sparks of the
steel ; but, as rapid as the flash of those sparks
in his memory, the impression faded, and he was
back in his old security.

"I fought,", said he a little sullenly. "If it

had been he that had had the better of me. my

6

1 62 THE GIRONDIN.

ghost would never have complained — least of
all to a woman."

" Friend," she said softly, " I am not blaming
you."

" Did they tell you more ? " he added ; " did
they speak of a house or of friends ? Or did they
give you any name or description ? "

" No," she said in a bold whisper, and lied ;
for in the gossip and the offered reward, in the
speech of his pursuers, and from his own manner,
she had easily made out the truth, and she knew
him for what he was : his name, his house, and
all his story.

" I am tired to hear so much of these perils,"
he said to her in another tone. " I can see,
through the door of this open prison, that the
moon is up. I dare not go out with you, for
you tell me that everything is watched, and yet
you tell me also that this place cannot be
suspected."

She grasped his wrists with her hands, and
he wondered at their sudden strength in the
darkness.

"Oh," she said, "try no more adventures,
but wait until 1 show you a way ; for in that
moonlight, if they should see from any window
any form coming hence it would go very ill ;

THE GIRONDIN. 163

and if they should see two together, two would
suffer, friend, for how would my people bear
to see me with a stranger ? "

" I will not go out," he said. ..." How clear
are these nights, from the midnight onward, when
the moon has risen ! "

" You shall stay here," she said, " and I will
come always at night-fall, and I will be with
you all the unknown hours, and leave you a
little before the dawning, and there shall be
our farewells. For in a little time, when seven
days have passed, and we have the dark of
the moon, and I have found some tale to tell,
and some wrong scent to put them on, then,
oh my friend, you will go out, and I will go
with you. But I shall not follow you beyond
some place of safety, which I shall have prepared."

"If I so desire," he said, "you will follow me."

She answered nothing at all. For all that
night, until just before the dawning, they were
together in the hiding-place.

CHAPTER X.

In which Two Lovers find themselves
in the Daylight.

CO one day passed, and another, and twice in
every daylight she brought him food ; and
after the fall of night he would sometimes creep
out a little and breathe the air and look furtively
from the shadow of the low wooden wall at the
lights in the houses far off, and wait until, when
all those lights were darkened, before the rising
of the moon, she would come to him where he
awaited her. And it seemed to him during those
•days as though many years were passing, and it
seemed to him also as though two lives had been
appointed for him — one the life before he knew
such vigils, but the other the life after them.

Never in all those long secret companionships
did he hear her voice aloud, nor she his ; nor did
they dare go out alone together beyond the walls
of his hiding-place or breathe the air outside, until,

THE GIRONDIN. 165

upon the evening of the seventh day, while the
lights were still shining in the windows, and long
before he had expected her, he heard footsteps,
not at the door, but behind the hut, and through
the chinks of it a voice that called him gently,
not by any name, but calling him friend.

" You must rise," she said, " friend, if you are
sleeping ; and if you are not sleeping you must
rise. You must come crouching round swiftly to
the back here where I am and where is a deep
shadow, and then we will go together to a place
I know."

Even as she spoke in whispers, those whispers
were so lamentable that his heart broke for her.
And when he came to her in that shadow, he
said, "What does it matter to me, Joyeuse, whether
I escape or no ? "

" Ah," said she, " friend, shall we be longer one
with the other if they make you a prisoner ? I
think not ! You are caught every way if you
remain ; and if you do what I shall tell you,
though we never see each other any more, you
shall be free ; and if you are free it is with God
and His holy ones whether we meet again."
When she had said this she went quickly before
him along the darkness of the hedge towards the
brook and the line of the woodland, and he

1 66 THE GIRONDIN.

followed. Then she went by a path she knew
into the underwood, and he still went after.

As they went the last sounds of the village were
lost behind them, and sleep came upon it and upon
the wild wood ; and as it was the dark of the moon,
they went secure from men. Twice he called to
her, and twice he would have halted ; but she
answered only by commands and still went forward,
until they came after many hours to an open place
in the wild wood. Here there was a pond, and
near the pond a lonely farmhouse, quite dumb and
sleeping and silent. But the dogs heard them and
barked, and Joyeuse was afraid.

" Come quickly with me," she said ; " we are
not yet at the end. There is a place of safety for
you beyond."

The wood closed upon them again beyond the
clearing ; she still led forward. It seemed at last
that the branches against the sky were somewhat
more clearly marked, and again they came to a
standing water. Boutroux thought that it looked
paler and deader than does water in the dim of the
night, and more staring. And then in a few
moments more it was evidently day, though but
the beginning of the day ; and with that light it
came upon him that he was not fit to be in such
company, and that all that business with her which

THE GIRONDIN. 167

he must carry with him till his death was a business
of darkness which in the light would turn ridic-
ulous ; for he was unshaven, his turned clothes
were in rags, and he was a vagabond.

As he so thought, and as the day rose until it
was broad light, she hurried forward leading his
way. Her skirt was of a russet brown, she had a
shawl about her shoulders, its corner hanging to
her waist, her head was bare. He saw once more
the colour of her hair, and when he considered
himself for a moment he could not bear it. She
would turn round and see him, and he did not
wish it so. Even as he was so thinking within
himself that he was not fit company for men at
large, and much worse company for this one
woman whom he knew, she turned and faced him,
and as she faced him she laughed in a manner so
young and so contented that he was for himself
very desperately ashamed ; but for her, never had
he gloried in her more.

"Ah," said he, "Joyeuse, you turned in time !"
And as he said it, he knew his tired and broken
face with its week's stubble upon it. "Ah,
Joyeuse, you turned in time ! And at last you
have seen your lover ! "

The day was now broad upon them, though the
sun was not up by half an hour. The mists were

1 68 THE GIRONDIN.

rising under the low trees. They were upon the
edge of a bank which ran down steeply for some
two hundred feet, with high beeches in a forest all
the way. She came and took his left hand, holding
it in her right as though they were children, and
led him, still laughing at him with her eyes, to
where upon a fallen tree they could sit together
and see below them a great, white, royal road.

" Friend," she said, laughing again, " I have
been out all night, and walking, have I not ? "

" You have, very joyously, Joyeuse."

" And am 1 the less fresh for it ? "

" Oh no," said he ; " but then you have no
beard."

" And is my hair too tousled ? "

" Why, no," said he, and as he said it he saw
not her face but her hair. " It is neat enough for
the great wealth of it. But then before you started
you had a comb, I hope, in your father's house."

" Friend," said she, " are my clothes ragged or
made absurd with hay and straw and the litter
of fern, or do these boots of mine show my feet?"

" I would to God they did ! " said he.

" But they do not, friend," she answered.

" No, they do not, Joyeuse."

" Very well then. If I still seem good to you,
do not be displeased with me, and do not foolishly

THE GIRONDIN. 169

go away. I have a place of safety for you and
a plan."

As she said this the beauty of her young eyes
filled with tears, and she watched him in a manner
which he suddenly remembered he had seen in the
face of his mother when she had watched him as
a little child. And once again Boutroux within
the depths of his heart marvelled at the complexity
of this world.

"Of all things," he thought to himself, "I
should have imagined that at least they cared for
shaving. But there are three things no man can
quite understand, and one of them I have always
heard is horses, and the other is the sea, and it
would seem that the third is Joyeuse."

They had left their seat and they had come to
the great royal road. But without proceeding
along it Joyeuse led him straight to a cottage by
its side, at the door of which a woman, neat — too
neat — severe, aged, and expectant, changed from an
expression of suspicion at their coming to an
expression somewhat more genial as she saw the
girl and knew her again.

" Well, Jo'lse," she said — " or since you are now
so old, shall I call you Isabel ? " She looked with
a mixture of disapproval and of command upon

Boutroux's wretched externals, but he was holding

Co

170 THE GIRONDIN.

himself very well, and there was a gallant strength
about his going with which she should not have
been displeased. " Sir," she said in a formal
manner, " since you have suffered for the King —
and I have heard the whole story from my foster-
child — you may claim from me anything you will."

" I claim nothing," he said.

" You shall have your life at any rate," said the
old woman. She said it in the peasants' manner,
and Boutroux heard in her tone the false kindness
of peasants bargaining. He looked full in her
hard eyes and wondered what the price of his
safety would be — and whether he would choose to
pay it.

The old woman, standing before the pair of them
at her threshold in the cool morning, was making
a plan. She said, —

"Come into my house, sir, for the roads. are
not always safe these times for every one, even
though the sun be not yet risen."

The girl was not asked, but she followed.
Boutroux, as he passed that cottage door, felt a
separation and a changing. He felt a plot in the
place. Better be flying and hiding, he thought,
and no one's will but my own to guide me, than
be subject to the calculations of others — and the
interest of this Hag of the Years.

THE GIRONDIN. 171

He watched the old woman leave the room on
her errand for him. Her very walk seemed too
secret and determined ; he mistrusted her absence
as he mistrusted her presence.

"Joyeuse," he said, "what is this old woman
into whose hands you have delivered me ? "

" Her name is Perrin," said Joyeuse : her lovely
eyes were more anxious than her lover's ; she
looked at him and pleaded, divining his suspicion
and his fears.

" What is her plan with me ? " he asked.

"I cannot tell — I dare not know. . . . Before
her substance grew, in old days, when my mother
died, my father hired her to his farm, and she
fostered me. In her second marriage she came
to this place. Oh ! do as she bids you. She
has power in this countryside."

"Joyeuse," he whispered, with his laughing
eyes full upon her, " how did you speak of me to
her ? What have I suffered for the King ? For
God's sake brief me in the lie."

" You got the wound from some Jacobin," she
said, "and you are a fugitive. And, friend," she
added, putting her mouth close to his ear, "I
thought I would give you some name or other ;
but I did not. - 1 thought of saying that your
name was Boutroux."

172 THE GIRONDIN.

" Lie for lie, Joyeuse," said Boutroux ; " and
since you love them so much, let me tell you,
upon my side, a little lie of my own. I will say
I was in a hut hidden for some days, but much
more especially for some nights, by a woman
from a hamlet the name of which I do not
know. But she had three names — Joise for
her betrothed, and for her father Isabel, but for
me Joyeuse. Then we went through a wood
together, and the day dawned. When jthe day
dawned I understood why I had dreamed of her
beauty."

"The one tale may be as false as the other,"
said Joyeuse.

They were standing in the bare, clean kitchen
of that place. The old woman had not yet
come back from her errand ; they still faced each
other, alone.

"Joyeuse," he said, "when 1 went to school
I heard a fairy tale, and I will tell it you now,
that you may always remember it."

" Tell on," she said.

"Joyeuse," he said, "the fairy tale was this:
That once there was the daughter of a king
whom Love himself made love to. And they
were to watch together all night until the dawn,
and they were to possess each other for ever ;

THE GIRONDIN. 173

but upon this condition, that she should never
see his face. Joyeuse, it so happened that
she saw his face, and then she lost him for
good and all."

" She would not so have lost him had he kept
about him some charm," answered the girl slowly.
" Have you no charm ? "

"I have," said he, "as you should know. It
is a gold medal of Rocamadour which my mother
gave me when I was a child. I have it on the
chain at my neck, a silver chain, and till I lose
it no great harm will befall my body. . . ."

As he said this the old woman returned, and
said to him, —

" Follow me. In what I have planned for
you you must be dressed in a certain fashion,
and you must clean yourself and be shaven.
There is a plan laid for you whereby you shall
be safe."

" In what you have planned for me ! " he
muttered, wondering, as he followed her. " In
what you have planned . . ."

He followed her into a little room, where were
soap and a razor and water prepared. There
was a suit of good woollen cloth upon the bed,
which suit was in the fashion of those hills : a
young farmer's Sunday suit, or one for feast-

174 THE GIRONDIN.

days. There was a rough shirt to go with it,
and a pair of laced shoes well greased ; and
Boutroux with all these made himself once more
a man, but this time a peasant of substance.

A small square of looking-glass, unframed,
hung from a nail. There were black patches
on it, due to age, but in it he saw that the
disgrace of his hiding had disappeared. He
felt less free. It was not his own disguise.
He felt himself a comedian at another's bidding,
and he loathed and dreaded the change. He was
like a man who is led blindfold with a strong
hand upon his wrist, and led, perhaps, on pur-
poses not his own. Moreover, the sleeplessness
of the night fell upon him, and he suddenly felt
fatigued.

He came back to the little low kitchen with
that fatigue apparent upon him, and eager for the
refreshment of her face. . . . The room was stark
bare. Its emptiness of her struck him like a chill of
presentiment. There was no one there, only the
old peasant woman, standing strict and forbidding,
who watched him hardly ; she was ready with
orders rather than with counsel. She so eyed
him, waiting for him to speak.

" Madame," he said, " where is that foster-
daughter of yours with whom I came?"

THE GIRONDIN. 175

"She has gone out, I think," said the peasant
woman steadily; "but it is no matter, for your
business now is with my son."

" Madame," said Boutroux courteously, " you
are invaluable to me! And, pray, what else do
you command ? My purse is at your service
. . . true, it is empty. Or would you rather
that I should forswear myself, or perhaps steal
or kill to your advantage ? What have you
told Joyeuse ? " he added suddenly, in a more
brutal voice. " Where have you sent her ? "

"Sir," said the old woman as steadily as ever,
"I may tell you that I respect any man who
has been wounded in the right cause, and I
know that you were wounded. I know by
whom — and I know whom you wounded also
— and where."

" Oh, Madame," said Boutroux elaborately, "you
have the advantage of me ! . . . you have hold
of some romance that is new to me. Nay, it
is indifferent to me — profoundly. But where is
Joyeuse ? "

" Young man, you understand me clearly,"
continued the peasant woman, with fixed thin
lips, " and you will understand me further.
Nothing is given for nothing. If you will lose
your head, lose it. If you would end safe, you

176 THE GIRONDIN.

will obey and be tame. Climb up into the cart
that is now at my door and sit beside my son,
who is to drive it. Go where he shall drive
you, and accept what I choose to offer you.
It is not a pastime, nor what you might have
chosen. . . . But it is pleasanter than a short
imprisonment and a public death."

" Where is Joyeuse, old hag ? " said Boutroux
again. " You will excuse mej Madame, if my
words touch upon the picturesque ; but I think
I have been tricked in some way."

The old lady was quite unmoved. " I am
bound to tell you nothing, young man," she
said. " I offer you safety, and you reply in a
way that gives me a good right to do with
you what I choose. She is not here. Do you
know what is here, within call? Ten of my
men in a barn, my son, whom you can hear
calling from his cart, and there are arms. There
is something else. There are, round the turning
of the road, still sleeping in the inn, officers of
the police from Bordeaux. Do you understand

"Old woman," said Boutroux insolently, and
swaggering up a little towards her, " you have
heard the saying that one may as well be hanged
for a sheep as for a lamb ; and I take it that

THE GIRONDIN. 177

of the two you are less a lamb than a sheep.
You have heard it said that I killed a man ? "

"Yes," said the old woman; "and I believe
it." She did not shrink from him ; she fixed
her small eyes on him like needle points.

" And if Joyeuse was where those armed men
are with their writs and their warrants, do you
think " — and he came a step nearer — " that, to
see her again for a moment or> two, I would
hesitate to put another item into the indictment ? "

As he so spoke he stepped back suddenly. A
man had lumbered in through the doorway, and
stood at his shoulder.

"You're quarrelling with mother," he grinned.
" They mainly do . . . but she beats un. Don't
'ee, Dame ? "

The mother said nothing ; for the first time
that morning she smiled, and it was a drawn
smile.

" I were to give 'ee this," went on the yokel,
" and to tell 'ee . . ." He grinned again.

As the young man said this he showed Bou-
troux in the midst of his enormous palm a very
small medal lying ; and Boutroux, rapidly and
instinctively feeling through his shirt at his
chest, found the chain there alone and no
medal attached to it. He picked the medal

178 THE GIRONDIN.

gently from that big hand : it was his medal
right enough ; it was his medal of gold. On
the one side was the figure, on the other the
legend. He hoicked out from his bosom the
end of the chain, as though he would fasten
the charm on again ; then, thinking better of
it, he put the chain back in his bosom and
the medal in his pocket. He asked himself in
what moment the lover's theft was done, and
he thought he remembered ; and as he so re-
membered, he smiled.

" You should have kept it for proof and a
clue when you betray me," he said.

"You are a mad fool," answered the old lady.
"You have done harm enough in the place. If
I had kept your medal I would have kept it
for the gold. There's no clue wanted for a
face like yours. If my son did not need you
to feed the rebels in his place, I had rather the
hangman had you. . . . But you are to go to
the armies, and go you will. It falls well for
us. Go and sell your flesh."

The sun had risen. He must go, or find
himself a prisoner. He considered the chances
of life and a possible vengeance. He decided,
and followed the young farmer out to the cart
that waited.

THE GIRONDIN. 179

" You are right, Madame," said he over his
shoulder ; " I am a fool, and passably mad. And
you, Madame, are an accursed old Royalist witch
whom my honest friends the Jacobins will do
well to burn. I will send them, never fear,
and you and your house above you and your
damned traitor serfs will be roasted and pass in
smoke."

The old lady did not fail.

" Go and replace my son : you are fitter meat
for Brunswick," she called after him. " We have
a use for your carrion."

"But I have no use for you," shouted Bou-
troux from the road. "Go and join your father
the devil — my friends shall send you there."

He climbed up into the cart. The big peasant,
overjoyed at the completion of the business, gave
a little click with his tongue and a flick with
his whip ; the horse jerked, pulled itself into a
slow trot, and they lumbered heavily up the
road.

CHAPTER XI.

Showing how £Men become Soldiers.

^|~^HE road was hollow and rising on a sharp
incline, paved as a royal road should be,
and wide.

In a matter of half a mile they came to the
summit of the hill ; here was a turn and a clump
of wood which, when they had passed it, hid from
Boutroux the hut and all his memories.

Before them from that height was to be seen
under the newly-risen sun a broad and excellent
champaign, woodlands and vineyards, a wide river
running through, which surely, he thought, must
be a stretch of the Dordogne. Far beyond, fram-
ing this delightful prospect and hazy against the
sky, stood noble and exalted distant hills. With
all that sight the thought of what he had lost was
mingled. The peasant had halted his lumbering
great horse and his rough cart : he was waiting for
some appointment.

THE GIRONDIN. 181

" Why do you not go on ? " said Boutroux.

" Maybe I've a friend," said the other young
man, grinning his broadest. "We've all a right
to our appointments."

Boutroux constrained himself, and within his
mind did no more than to add, by way of codicil,
a special curse upon the son, to follow that good
larger curse which he had laid upon his mother
and her home. But even as this passed through
his imaginings he saw standing by the step of the
cart a labouring man, old, grizzled, and thin,
who saluted them in a clumsy fashion and climbed
up on to the board at the back of the cart behind
them. With the fall of the road the horse was
urged to a sharp trot. Boutroux was ill content.

" Who is that man ? " he asked.

" One o' the hands," said his companion, with no
further explanation.

" Do you need him ? "

" I hopes not ! ... But 'tis alias useful to find
another along wi' un."

The cart halted to take a piece of rise at a walk,
and as it halted the old labourer behind slid to the
ground and walked behind it, like one watching
and guarding.

Boutroux leaped down from the cart and came
close up to the old man, who recoiled much more

1 82 THE GIRONDIN.

than that woman in the hut had done. He said to
him, —

" I shall track you, and I shall follow you : you
shall pay the price for this plot, whatever it is. . . .
Where am I being taken to ? "

The old man winced and still backed away ; he
would not answer ; he half cowered.

"Doan you be a fool," said the driver, looking
back at the scene as he halted. " Come up 'long-
side me."

"Old man," said Boutroux, as he got up into
the cart again, " it will be ill for you at the end
of this journey, and worse for you later on. Be
wise and go home." But the old man clambered
on again to his back-board ; Boutroux said no
more. The road fell again in a straight fall of a
mile and more before them, and he sat silently
beside the yokel mile after mile.

Once in that long stretch of downward road he
pulled the medal from his pocket and looked at
it. He put it back. At last, after a long and
rustic silence, he again asked the fellow at his side
where he was being driven, and what was all this
plan.

The peasant looked at him with sidelong eyes
and smirked to himself, whipped up the horse
(which shambled not much the faster for it), then

THE GIRONDIN. 183

looked again with another such glance, and said :
" What might your name be ? "

A false name was on the tip of Boutroux's
tongue, but he was too angry for prudence. He
said : " It's none of your business what my name
may be ! "

" My business more 'n most," chuckled the
rustic, " my business more 'n most, seeing your
name's to be my name in an hour or so, and
mine yours. . . . My name is Perrin."

" How is your name to be my name ? " said
Boutroux, falling with an ease that surprised him
into that conversation of parables and hints which
is the very expression of a peasantry.

His companion nudged him suddenly and un-
pleasantly in the ribs. " Who goes a-soldiering ? "
he said, and winked.

"God knows ! " said Boutroux : but he put
this with what the old cat had said of selling his
flesh to the rebels, and he began to understand.

The cart was half-way down the long slow
descent, the glory of the landscape had diminished,
the distant hills were masked by nearer folds of
land ; the day, now that the sun had risen, began
even thus early to show signs of heat ; a sort of
sleepiness was on him mixed with ill-temper, and
for a good ten minutes he said nothing more, but

1 84 THE GIRONDIN.

he was determined to know what was before him.
He could not bear to resign his freedom to the
army, yet he knew that he would have to do so
lest a worse constraint should fall upon him.

Just as he had determined to speak again he saw
far down the road before them three mounted men
in uniform. As the cart approached them, he
made out a sergeant, old and grizzled, and with
him two quite young men of some cavalry
regiment with whose facings he was unfamiliar,
and which he could not name.

BoUtroux and his driver came up to that small
patrol, and even as they reached it the peasant,
sitting at Boutroux's right, put up a hand as though
warning the sergeant to make no sign. He
beckoned to the soldier, got him to his side, and
began whispering to him in the confidential way
of peasants ; when the whispering was over the
soldier looked up doubtfully into Boutroux's face,
and Boutroux looked ironically into his. *

" Perrin ? " he said.

Boutroux winked slightly, and was silent.

" Perrin is your name ? " said the soldier again,
asking the question in full.

" Very possibly," said Boutroux. " It is a
matter upon which I should wish to know more
before I committed myself."

THE GIRONDIN. 185

The old sergeant smiled grimly. " You are not
the only one," said he, " who in these days must
be decently careful. Come, I will not bother you
as to whether your name is Perrin. What the
regiment needs, my lad, is a Perrin's two legs and
two arms and some sort of a head, the duller the
better. Have you a dull head, Perrin ? "

" Oh yes," said Boutroux, " my head is dull
enough for the Militia, or for the Ministry of
War."

" You can't shirk," said the sergeant ; " and the
less you answer the better."

" I don't want to shirk," said Boutroux, " but I
do want to thresh out that question of my name.
Note you, Sergeant, a name is an important thing :
not in itself but in the repetition of it ; for if a
man's name goes on changing like a marquis's son's,
it is a disturbance to all the world."

" Oh, give yourself any name you like, lad, only
get down and follow."

"How far?"

"Why," said the sergeant, with a laugh that
was hoarse with the life he had led, "my orders
are as far as Angouleme . . . but the enemy are
nearer the Rhine."

" Angouleme ? " said Boutroux, fixing his eyes
upon a distant tree. "... That's lucky . . ."

1 86 THE GIRONDIN.

He sighed. "That's one of the luckiest things
I've ever heard. In Angouleme, Sergeant, it so
precisely happens, there lives the only man in all
this country who may know my name. I shall
forget it myself until I find him."

"There are many like you," muttered the
sergeant; and Boutroux climbed down from the
cart and stood by the side of the soldier's horse.

" Now, you will follow quietly ? " said the grey
old fellow, looking down.

"Not if you trot," said Boutroux carelessly.
" No man can follow a trotting horse quietly."

"We'll mount you in the town," said the
sergeant ; and as he said it the rustic, immensely
relieved, turned his cart round, gave them all the
blessing of God, and was for returning in peace to
his home. But Boutroux, as he turned, spoke a
word to the sergeant, and said, —

" Sergeant, I am a man of honour."

"They all say that," said the sergeant suspi-
ciously.

" Not only am I a man of honour, Sergeant, but
you are mounted and we are in the midst of open
fields, where there is no cover for a hunted man.
Come, let me say a word privately to the driver of
this cart : to tell you the truth, I have a message
for my friend — from the Jacobins."

THE GIRONDIN. 187

The sergeant did not answer, but he did nothing
to prevent the movement. He was used to such
scenes in the pressing of men. Boutroux strolled
up to the driver just as that rustic was trying to
get some pace out of his old jade ; he came up by
his side and said, —

" Halt a minute ! "

The yokel pulled up, cursing.

" We must make an arrangement — for both our
sakes. I think you said my name was Perrin, did
you not ? "

" That's what I said," answered the youth, and
grinned.

"I think you said that your name was my

" That's it," said the peasant, and grinned more
broadly.

"Very well, Perrin," said Boutroux — and he
said " Very well " with a decision that unpleasantly
reminded the peasant of his lord. "Very well,
Perrin, listen ! Your crops this year will fail you :
you will not pay your taxes. The men-at-arms
will come to distrain upon your filthy hovel, but
before they take your sticks the men of my society
will find you ; they will bind and beat that old hag
of a mother of yours ; " — the peasant did not dare
to strike him — "and when they have done so,

1 88 THE GIRONDIN.

a worse thing will happen to you all. They will
sack your place, they will kill you as they choose,
and you perhaps will be burned upon the wood of
your own woodpile. They have more power than
you know."

"Oh, we care nothing for prophecies in my
village," said the rustic, a little pale. " Go your
way ; you are a soldier man now : better for you
than for me ! "

" I only wanted you to look forward to it," said
Boutroux, " because it will make you surfer more
until the time shall come. Meanwhile ..." He
leapt suddenly on to the step of the cart, threw
the old labourer to the ground, half stunning him,
and in the same moment struck the driver with
his fist full drive in the mouth.

Blood poured from it ; the victim of the blow
beat the air with his hands, and roared for an
arrest. He had clambered down, the blood still
streaming from his broken teeth — he was mumbling
and cursing for an arrest ; the old labourer had
picked himself up and was tearing away down the
road. The sergeant would offer no redress.

" Yours to catch the birds," he said, " and theirs
to curse you. The hussars are not your police-
men ! get you home ! "

The fellow limped painfully to his seat ; he

THE GIRONDIN. 189

moved off promising pursuit, and Boutroux turned
back to the sergeant's side.

" I have given my message," he said, " and now
we can all go forward."

The two privates were laughing. They were
used to the impotent anger of pressed men, and
they liked to see them game. They drew up their
horses behind him, and Boutroux walked beside
the sergeant's bridle, now and then exchanging a
word, the sergeant at one remark of his or another
smiling down under his grey old moustaches,
amused at such a recruit, until they came to the
gate of a little walled town, and there a guard
was standing.

The old sergeant dismounted stiffly, and Boutroux
most politely held his bridle ; but the sergeant
turned his horse to one of the two men, and
beckoned Boutroux into the guard-room.

There was a rough table in it with pen and ink,
and a dirty fold of paper upon which was printed
the regimental arms and the King's regulations.
The sergeant summoned two witnesses and ran
through the formula of the oath. When he came
to the recruit's name he muttered aside to Boutroux :
" Come, you must give a name — any name."

"But," said Boutroux calmly, "how am I to
know my name until I get to Angouleme ? "

190 THE GIRONDIN.

"I must fill in something," said the sergeant
fiercely.

"I would give the name of Perrin," said
Boutroux thoughtfully, " were it not so unlucky !
Such damnable things are to happen to a gentle-
man of that family ! "

" Put down Perrin," said the sergeant ; and
Boutroux signed " G. B. Perrin " in a sharp and
educated hand, with a rapidity of the pen that
was suspicious ; but in those days of August and
the invasion, questions were not too closely
pressed.

"Perrin," said the sergeant, finishing the
formula, " you do here swear on your conscience,
and with this oath, to the Nation, that you will
loyally and duly, etc., etc. . . . and that's all
over !

" Is that the oath ? " said Perrin.

"Yes," said the sergeant, beginning to show
signs of sharpness. "We've done with joking
now, my boy."

" Well, then, there it is ; and what's the new
way of swearing ? "

I The sergeant looked up puzzled. "I for-
get," he said. "There used to be God in it,
|eh?"

A man of the guards said respectfully : " They

THE GIRONDIN. 191

swear with the right hand spread outward now,
Sergeant."

" Do they ? " said the old sergeant surlily.
He was a Tory.

Boutroux spread out his right hand. The
sergeant put his hand in the pocket of his leather
breeches for a coin, and found none there. " We
must have the coin," he said stupidly. "It's in
the essence of the contract."

" And what is the least coin necessary ? " said
Boutroux.

" One livre," said the sergeant ; " it's the law,
and has been ever since I first knew the service,
God curse it ! "

" Why, then," said Boutroux genially, " let me
lend you the coin." He pulled out a handful of
silver and put down the franc.

The sergeant took it and pushed it back across
the table towards him ; in so doing, he spoke the
last words of the ritual, "And as you take this
coin, so you are engaged."

"Precisely," said Boutroux.

The sergeant picked the franc up, rang it to
test its value, and quietly slipped it into his own
breeches pocket. "It is a custom of the regi-
ment," he said. "We do not return the earnest
money."

192 THE GIRONDIN.

"Naturally," said Boutroux, "naturally. But
have you spat upon it for luck ? "

"You have shown more money than is good
for you," was the sergeant's only answer. " You'll
have to stand wine." He handed the coin to one
of the guard, Boutroux reluctantly added two
more, and the man came back with some very
good wine of Chardac, little enough for three
whole livres of silver — but soldiers are always
cheated. They drank together to the new
recruit.

" It is against the King's regulations," said the
sergeant stiffly, "for superiors to drink with in-
feriors ! Hum ! Therefore, Private Perrin, you
will drink first and I after, and in that way we
shall not drink together ! . . . Has any one a
little gunpowder ? " he added more genially.

The private soldier standing by shook his head.
" We are allowed no service cartridges," he said.

" 1 thought as much," said the sergeant thought-
fully ; " we shall have to make it up in snuff."
He took a pinch from a box which he had about
him and carefully peppered Boutroux's wine there-
with. " Now, my boy," he said kindly, " drink
that ; it will make a man of you."

Boutroux drank the wine.

" It is this kind of wine," said the private

THE GIRONDIN. 193

soldier sententiously, "that makes a man sneeze,
not in his nose but in his stomach."

" It is good wine," said Boutroux, " but the
snuff seemed somehow to spoil it. How does it
taste without snuff, Sergeant ? "

" It is better," said the sergeant, smacking his
lips and speaking slowly — " it is better without
snuff."

" Why, then," said Perrin, " pour me some out
unseasoned."

This they did ; and when Perrin had drunk it,
the sergeant looking at him gravely the while,
that old soldier said, —

" Perrin, my poor lad, let me give you some
advice, and if you take it you will be a wise man.
In the service we love boldness and sauce, but we
treat them hardly ; and if they go too far we treat
them ill."

" Sergeant," said Perrin, with deference, " it was
the snuff that went to my head ; by now I am
quite cured."

"Take him away," said the old chap. As he
said it, he sat down to fill up certain papers,
establishing the new recruit in his corps ; and
Boutroux was led away by two of his new com-
panions, looking and feeling odd between them in

his civilian dress.

7

194 THE GIRONDIN.

As they went, one of them said, " What roped
you in ? "

" Debt," answered Boutroux promptly.

" Ah ! " said his guard, sighing, " and no
wonder ! " He knew that gate of entry into
the service.

"Yes," said Boutroux, "debt. I cut a man's
coat with a long knife, and the damages were
more than I could pay. But the Perrins are an
unlucky family, and there's worse coming on those
who stayed behind."

They said nothing more to him for a hundred
yards or so ; but as they approached the town
hall of the place, one of them, nodding towards
it, said, "There's a pack of others like you in
there ! "

Boutroux did not answer. They led him into
a great basement hall vaulted in stone, and there
he found a score or so of every kind and con-
dition : young volunteers from the place, two or
three gentlemen's sons, a fellow plainly out of
jail who later boasted of it, and one, a Basque,
who had come northward leading a bear and who
could not make out what in the world had
happened to him, but who, with all these others,
had been caught_jmd was to be made into a
soldier.

THE GIRONDIN. 195

Overlooking this crowd was a young, mild-eyed
man, in the same uniform of the cavalry as had
been worn by Boutroux's first captors. The stripes
upon his arm were of cloth and not of gold ; he
was apparently inferior in some way, but he seemed
to have a command.

His voice was gentle, low, and deep, and he
was kind to them all. He formed them in that
basement hall into a sort of rough column with a
front of four ; and when he had them so formed
he looked anxiously at the little squad, and said
mildly, like a man asking the time of day or
passing some remark upon the weather, " March ! "
Having so said, he went out of that hall, through
the great door, into the garden of the town hall,
and the little column shambled after him.

"There is a lack of parade about all this,"
thought Boutroux.

In the garden they found a person of great
splendour, a little effeminate in speech, well
clothed and beautifully armed.

"And this," said Boutroux to himself, "is an
officer ! "

This being gave orders to the young soldier
who had marched them into the garden, and the
lot of them were led away to a barn where deep
and clean straw was laid. The young soldier

196 THE GIRONDIN.

who had brought them spoke again in his mild,
monotonous voice, as though he were repeating a
lesson, —

" Those of you who wish to sleep, may sleep ;
any who desire to go into the town may do so.
But it is forbidden to send any letter or to
approach the postmaster or his stables. At noon
I will come for those who can ride ; the others
will remain here. Arrange it among yourselves."

He left them, and the dispirited band began
discussing which of them could ride. Two
opinions arose in their debate : one was that all
of them could ride, the other that none could
ride. For there were some who thought that
those who could not ride would be discharged ;
but there were others who thought that, on the
contrary, all would be kept, and those who could
ride would have a better and earlier chance of
easy treatment. In the end, it was decided to
decide nothing. One boy who wept continually
and asserted that horses terrified him, was marked
out as a butt by his fellows.

" If they desire," said a large, bold young man,
whose trade it had been to sell cheese, " some
one of us who certainly cannot ride, we will hand
over this friend," and he pointed to the weeping
figure. When he had so spoken they disposed

THE GIRONDIN. 197

themselves upon the straw. Those who, like
Boutroux, had had no repose during the whole
night (and they were many), fell at once into a
deep and exhausted sleep : the remainder talked,
some despairingly, some eagerly, one with another ;
not a few were curious and pleased to find them-
selves upon the edge of soldiering. The little
man who had cried wandered about by himself;
if he had dared, he would have run away, but
he had no friends and he did not know the
country.

Boutroux, being of those who slept, saw nothing
of this. What woke him at noon was the tearing
noise of a trumpet in the very door of the barn ;
and as he sat up in the straw, exhausted and
bewildered, he saw before him again that mild
young man in uniform and sword, who tapped
him on the shoulder and said, —

" Come ! I cannot afford to have any one
late ! "

In a field outside the barn there were twenty
horses of every sort and kind, most of them old,
all of them unenthusiastic, waiting saddled with
the heavy campaign saddle of the service. The
young uniformed man, as gently as ever, put
a man to each horse, and then said dolefully,
" Mount." Those of the twenty who did not

1 98 THE GIRONDIN.

know how this was done were taken away :
some punishment was in store for them. Of
the ten who at least could mount, eight wished
they had not, as did their horses too. And of
these eighty six were told in that same quiet
voice to come off again, and went to join their
unfortunate companions. Of the remaining four
was Boutroux. The young, quiet man went up
to Boutroux and said, —

"Look here, my friend, it will save time and
trouble if you will tell me frankly, since there
are only four of you, do you or do you not
ride?"

"I can ride this beast," said Boutroux. "As
for the other three, you can find out by touching
up their mounts with any stick that comes handy ;
and mind you, when I say I can ride this brute,
I only judge by his ears, which seem to be made
of soft cloth."

The young soldier smiled a gentle smile.
"Yes," he said, sighing, "I ought to have put
you upon a more vicious beast ; but our mounts
are worn. Have you ridden ? "

"Oh yes," said Boutroux, "I have ridden."
He was on the point of saying, " I was a postilion
for a night," but he checked himself.

" It is a pity," sighed the young man ; " we can

THE GIRONDIN. 199

never make a good hussar out of a man who has
ridden as a civilian."

The four were trotted round and round. Three
could sit their beasts, Boutroux among them. One
fell off at the first sign of motion ; he was dis-
missed into an outer darkness, and the young
soldier, left with the three, said : " That decides
it ; three out of ten ! "

He went back to make his report. The three
found themselves set apart in the stables, sweeping
up, cleaning and baiting, and later carrying pails of
water. As they did so the young soldier gently
reminded them that these advantages they owed
to their power over the brute creation.

" We make three classes of recruits," he said :
"some must march behind, to be drilled and
catch us up as they can ; others we can mount,
and they ride with us to where we join and are
drilled on the march ; others we incorporate
if they can ride at all. Such are the times we
live in, and they are evil. Of the twenty who
were netted here, ten said they rode ; of these
you three can for your sins remain seated with
difficulty upon a jaded horse — on which account,"
he added, sighing again, "there is attributed to
you the very noble service of stable duty." He
appointed a sort of bully from among the older

loo THE GIRONDIN.

soldiers to look after them, and went off to take
his orders.

At five o'clock the three found themselves
mounted, with the young, sad soldier by their
side, following at the tail of a long train of cavalry
that was filing out of the town. As they passed
the further gate the trumpets sounded again in
a grand and challenging manner.

" It is a wonderful thing," said Boutroux to the
sad young soldier, "but these trumpets do not
frighten my horse at all."

" The inferior," answered the young soldier po-
litely, quoting as from a book — "the inferior
does not address his superior until his superior
has addressed him."

" I'm sure I'm very sorry," said Boutroux.

" Had you been longer in the service," said the
young soldier quietly, by way of answer, "I
would for that last remark have, reported you
for punishment."

This said, they rode side by side for some two
miles in complete silence.

The road went on monotonous and meaning-
less, and Boutroux thought as he went that the
life of a soldier was something quite utterly
different from anything that he had conceived.
Then he got a new light upon it.

THE GIRONDIN. 201

Far off a voice gave a loud, long-drawn cry that
sounded like no word he had ever heard, and
at once right down the line there passed a sort
of wave of trotting. It reached him and his
two companions, and the young soldier who
looked after them. They also broke into a
shambling trot. He had heard that a soldier
must not rise in his stirrups, and as he was
wondering what alternative a soldier had, he
was surprised to find his leader turn to him and
say,—

" Now that we are trotting and there is a noise,
we can talk."

" I'm delighted to hear you say so," Boutroux
gasped between the jolts of the saddle. "Did
you notice the poor child among us who was
crying ? "

"Oh yes," said the young soldier, with even
more than his accustomed sadness.

"Has he found the service too hard in these
few hours ? " asked Boutroux pitifully.

" No," said the young soldier, musing ; " he was

not capable of anything, so we made him a servant

to the captain of Troop B. The captain's wife

thought he would make a good servant ... he

will have an easy time. Better for him than

for us ! "

7a

202 THE GIRONDIN.

" And will he make a good servant ? " said
Boutroux.

" No," said the other, " but he will not have to
ride now or at any other time. And, oh Lord !
he will get more money than we do."

CHAPTER XII.

Showing how Soldiers are not always so.

TT was two days later when the trumpet sounded
before dawn in the streets of a straggling
village, and the men woke grumbling from the
straw in the barns and took their horses from
the stables to saddle them, and mustered at
last in the market square.

The march was to be a short one : they were
within eight miles of Angouleme.

The odd procession with its civilians and its
uniformed troops, its veterans, its young recruits
as yet undrilled, moved out along the great
highway. They had not gone a mile in that
summer morning when there came up at a gallop
a man on horseback from far away down the
road. He rode as men ride in action, and as
though he bore news of immediate consequence.
He was an orderly. He spoke to the head of
the detachment, saluting, and he handed him

2o4 THE G1RONDIN.

the paper that he bore. The officer read the
paper, looked puzzled, and exchanged some words
with the orderly ; then bade him go down the
column and explain in detail to the non-com-
missioned officers, especially to the fourriers. That
orderly came down the column to where the gentle-
faced young man rode, as was his place, by
Boutroux's side at the tail of the line. The
orderly had something smart about him as of
the old service, before the Revolution and the
invasion, but he was very tired. He was sitting
his horse anyhow, as though he had ridden too
long, and the first thing that the gentle-faced
young man said to him was, "Who shortened
your stirrups ? " He said it familiarly, for they
were of equal rank.

"It is your eyes that deceive you, Hamard,"
said the other, mocking him ; " no man in the
hussars ever shortens his stirrups. I opportunely
changed the length of my legs by quite six inches
a mile up the road. You must see that my
legs are beyond the regulation length."

" That explains it," said the other gravely,
and Boutroux wondered whether this were the
wit of the regiment, "for if so," thought he,
" I must prepare myself to make jests of the
kind."

THE GIRONDIN. 205

" What have you there, Hamard ? " said the
newcomer, jerking with his chin at Boutroux as
he sat in his peasant clothes upon the horse.

"Why," said the sad-faced young sergeant
whose name Boutroux thus heard, "that object
explains itself."

" It does," said the newcomer. " Are you
quite sure of him ? "

" We're not sure- of . anybody^' ' „said Sergeant
Hamard. "You, for instance. How did you
leave things in Angouleme ? "

"There were," said the messenger, looking
at the sky as though he would find his wordsr
there ; " there were two officers left with the
regiment when it reached Angouleme — a captain
and a lieutenant. The others had preferred to
serve the enemy ; they had gone away."

" Two, that's short rations ! Two, and not
a major among them ! "

"No," said the messenger slowly, "nor a
captain now. He is no longer there."

" No wonder," said the young sergeant ; " the
service is a hole from which a man will escape
if he can."

" True," said the other ; " the lieutenant,^
liowever, after some hesitation, has declared for ft
the Nation."

206 THE GIRONDIN.

" Has he indeed ? " said the sergeant, and
he sighed — as he always ,did. "It is a pity
that the subaltern ranks should feel themselves
so tied ! Did any one try to kill the captain
when he bolted ? "

"Oh yes," said the messenger, "the usual
thing ; the guard wasted a few shots, but it was
dark, and he got away."

" It's a long way to the frontier," said Boutroux,
mixing in this cryptic conversation for the first
time.

" You'll find it so, young man," said Sergeant
Hamard dryly.

" That captain has gone before us into Galilee,"
said Boutroux.

The sergeant glanced at him slyly. " When you
have been in the regiment a little longer," he said,
"you will be a little more careful of your tongue."
,' To which the messenger added, " My wretched
fellow, it is true, and remember it : treason and
even desertion are most strictly forbidden in
all below the rank of captain."

"And who is left in Angouleme," asked
Hamard, " to look after us all ? "

"The lieutenant, as I told you," said the
other shortly ; " but some one else has come :
a Parliament man."

THE GIRONDIN. 207

" A civilian ? " said the sergeant, wondering.

"You may call him a civilian now," said the
messenger in a musing tone, " but he has tremen-
dous go, and it seems he commanded a regiment
in his time. He drinks heavily at night ; he
sleeps well ; and he is like a tornado in the
morning."

" It's all Greek to me," said Hamard.

"You will understand well enough when we
get to the town," answered the other, "and
meanwhile I was to tell you this, only the charm
of your conversation distracted me — when we
get into Angoul6me we obey orders, do you
understand ? "

" I've found it exceedingly difficult to do any-
thing else during the last few months ; show
me my superior and I'll obey orders," answered
the sergeant.

"Well, but that's the hitch ; your superiors
aren't there . . . and there may be some
argument."
-1 " That's what I feared."

"Now when you hear argument," continued
the new-comer, " take my tip : I've been watching.
If one tells you one thing, being a soldier, and
the other tells you another, being a civilian to
the eye, and a shouting and a swearing one,

208 THE GIRONDIN.

why, you will do well to obey the shouting
and the swearing Parliament man. IF you obey"
contrariwise, you're shot. Friend," he added,
putting up a hand and laying it on the sergeant's
bridle arm gently, " for God's sake tell everybody
to be sensible."

" I have only three to tell," said the gentle-faced
young sergeant.

" Then tell all the three and tell them in time,"
said the messenger brusquely, looking him full in
the face. " For it will be a matter of shooting be-
fore noon ; and the people who shoot, wound, worse
luck ! They have all the guns. It's the Parliament
man that has the magazine."

When he had said this he proceeded to tell the
whole tale. The news had come down five days
before. The King was imprisoned ; there was God
knew what government in Paris, but it was some-
thing fierce. The hussars had gone to pieces.
The ranks were there, for the most part. The
sergeants had held. There had been a few deser-
tions, but the men were kept by pay and food and
had not where to go. In all the squadrons not
twenty privates had decamped, but the officers were
gone, all but one — a lieutenant, a ranker. The
rest had got off" across country ; they were for the
invader now the King had fallen. A man was

THE GIRONDIN. 209

there from the Parliament in Paris, and this man
had full powers. The time had come, he repeated,
for every one to do what he was told.

" Perrin," said the gentle Hamard to Boutroux,
" do you ever pray ?"

" Never ! " said Boutroux decidedly.

" Do you ever toss a coin ? "

"No, but when others do it I often cry heads
or tails as the case may be."

"Why then, shall we pray or shall we toss a
coin ? for I fear that orders will be contradictory in
Angouleme."

" If I were you," said Boutroux, " I would await
the event, and after that I should pray, or at any
rate I would offer up prayer or curses according to
the result."

"There is not much comfort in that," said the
sergeant, and for some time after both were silent.

The messenger from Angouleme trotted away
again up the column on his wearied mount, and
soon they saw before them the hill and the packed
houses and the domes of the town.

The guard, as they came up to the gate of
Angouleme, sent forward two men who quietly
asked for a password and were given it. As the
detachment came in they noted that the guard did
not salute, and it seemed to them that there were

210 THE GIRONDIN.

very few men at the gate. The column was halted
and bidden to dismount. All obeyed, including
the officer who led them. And when this had
been done, a short, swarthy man, nearly sixty
years of age, with an animal determination in
his face, his eyes bloodshot (from drink or from
lack of sleep), but very fixed in their glance, came
out suddenly from the guardroom at the gate.

There was an odd mixture of fear, respect, and
annoyance in the way in which the soldiers re-
ceived this figure.

He was dressed in knee-breeches, he wore no
sword, he had a great riding-coat about him, of a
dark green colour with brass buttons, on which
were stamped the Fasces and the Axe. He had
neither wig nor hat upon his head, but a mass of
his own dark curling hair; and around his waist,
making a mass of silken colour, was a tricolour
scarf. . It was tied in a huge bow above the sword
hip — where was no sword — and the two tails of it
hung down almost to his feet.

" In the name of the Nation," he said huskily,
staring at the commander of the detachment, who
stood before him without insolence or curiosity,
awaiting what remained to be said. "I bring
commands for whom 1 choose," he said brutally,
" and I break what commissions I choose."

THE GIRONDIN. 211

"There is no need for you to speak to me
thus," said the commander of the detachment in
an easy tone. "These with me are for the most part
lads recruited during my mission to the south of
this town ; the rest are of the old regiment. I
Only await orders."

The scarfed politician in the riding-coat, the
tricoloured, was a little mollified, but he still
spoke brutally.

"This captain who has bolted was one of
yours ? "

" I don't even know which one it was," answered
the lieutenant quietly.

The politician gave the name.

" Oh yes ! He was one of ours," said the
lieutenant.

" And who else is going to bolt ? " asked the
politician angrily.

"None that I know of, sir," said the officer
gravely. " As for my men, they have come here
bringing in the recruits to drill . . . and we
take orders from Paris," he concluded.

"Ah," said the politician with a big breath,
"you take orders from Paris?" He looked the
soldier up and down. "I know what soldiering
is, mind you ! "

"So I should have thought," said the cavalry

212 THE G1RONDIN.

officer in answer. " In the line, I should say ? "
he added.

" No damned insolence ! " shouted the other,
suddenly firing up. " In the guns ! "

" Well, then, in the guns."

"Well, then, in the guns," mimicked the
politician, mocking him, "and in the guns we
stood no nonsense. . . . Do you know that you
have no colonel ? "

" Since when ? " said the chief of the detach-
ment.

"The devil knows," answered the politician
with an unpleasant laugh. "But the regiment
and you others were to concentrate at Poitiers."

The cavalry-man nodded.

"Well," said the other with a sniff, "he had
gone — bolted — by the time I came through."

The cavalry-man nodded again.

The politician grew exasperated. " I don't know
whether you know more of it than you care to
say, but do you "know what strength there is in
Poitiers ? "

"There are not quite six hundred sabres to
command, when all the detachments have come in,
counting the recruits. I have the count correctly
enough."

"You know what I mean," said the politician

THE GIRONDIN. 213

surlily, but with a flash in his eye. <{ Who is to
command your six hundred sabres ? "

" If the colonel is gone," said the other calmly,
"the senior officer."

"Well, my lad," answered the deputy coarsely,
" that's you."

They looked at each other in mutual anger,
with disgust and contempt upon the side of the
soldier, and a little hidden fear of consequences
upon the side of the civilian ; for that civilian was
there alone unguarded, with nothing but the
authority of the Parliament behind him. ..." You
understand me ? " he asked. " I have the commis-
sions in my pocket, and I can make and unmake.
Will you take it on ? "

" I do what I am told," said the soldier shortly.
" Who are there here in Angouleme ? "

"Three more detachments and perhaps a hun-
dred recruits," said the other. " You must drill
them on the way. You have heard what has
happened in Paris ? "

The cavalry-man answered that he had heard.

" How long will it take you to go to
Poitiers?"

" Can I have remounts ? " asked the officer.

" Can your recruits ride them ? " retorted the
politician.

2i4 THE GIRONDIN.

"They will have to," said the officer patiently.
" If you get me remounts I can be there upon the
evening of the second day. But once there I must
be able to fill my stables again and to pick and
choose."

"Oh, you'll do that all right," said the other

roughly. " We can gather horses by the hundred

[from the lujaa.tics.who have Jjeja^^dsiag^under the

jjpriests thereabouts. Oh ! " he went on, laughing

'hoarsely, " every man that comes out with his nag

for the Pope is a beast for us, and sometimes a

jrecruit as well. . . . We turn 'em in ! There's

/some use in rebels ! " At this point he jerked his

thumb for the officer to follow him, and they went

together into the guard-room. A little while after

the soldier came out with the expression of a man

who has eaten bitter fruit and has made up his

mind.

He mounted and gave orders that all his com-
mand should mount. He dispatched two soldiers
with orders, and in a few minutes there were
gathered in the great place of the town quite three
hundred mounted men ; a hundred of them were
still in their civilian clothes, sitting awkwardly in
their knee-breeches or with trousers tied with
string at the knee.
Boutroux filed in with the rest. There was

THE GIRONDIN. 215

plenty of jostling and cursing and orders both
whispered and shouted ; but in the long run some
sort of formation was got together. The two
trumpeters sat their horses before the line in the
square. The crowd of the town had begun to
gather in the corners of the big open space to
watch what might be toward; they laughed at
the fellows in the civilian rags and they derided
such a show. The officer who had commanded
Boutroux's detachment and the recruits on the
march from the south, and who had just held his
conversation with the commissioner from the
Parliament, rode up to where the trumpets were
and faced the men. He had one lieutenant at
his side ; the sole remaining one was at the head
of the formation. He gave the order.

"Now that the men are assembled," said he
to a sergeant, "you can tell them to sound the
assembly."

" Yes, my Captain," said the man.

"Colonel!" said the other, looking at him and
very nearly forgetting discipline so far as to smile.

" Yes, my Colonel," stammered the man again
with wide eyes. He rode up to the trumpets.

" The assembly and the regimental call," he said.

"Without the colonel?" asked the trumpet
sergeant-major sullenly.

216 THE GIRONDIN.

The sergeant moved his head imperceptibly
towards the young officer still in his lieutenant's
uniform, who sat his horse alone and looked down
that long line. "That's the new colonel," he
whispered.

"God help us all in the hussars !" answered the
trumpet sergeant-major, and he gave the order.

The two men lifted their trumpets and sounded
the assembly and the regimental call, giving that
flourish at the end with their instruments which
was due to a colonel's command.

As this ceremony — which was symbolic and
decisive of the regiment's adhesion to the Revolu-
tion in Paris — took place, the Parliamentarian came
up towards the new young colonel at the head of
this command. He was swaggering and rolling on
his feet, his tricoloured sash was still about him,
and his way was marked by long rolls of popular
cheers. Two cavalry-men on foot, with drawn
swords, went with him. He came across the broad,
open empty space, still swaggering, stopped near
the officer, set his feet wide apart, and said, —

u Colonel, that is but half your command ; the
other half awaits you at Poitiers."

The officer gravely saluted.

"I will ask you, when the men are dismissed
and quartered, to help me draw up a list of pro-

THE GIRONDIN. 217

motions. We must have a cadre. The com-
missions must be filled."

" It is simple enough," said the officer in a low
voice. " I know the best of the non-commissioned
officers here, and you can fill the list from no
other source."

" We don't only want the best soldiers," growled
the politician.

" I will talk to you of the rest," said the other
guardedly.

" And what of making sergeants in the place of
those we take for commissions ? "

"I would have the new commissioned officers
decide on the recommendations," said the colonel
of half an hour's standing.

He sent another order ; the trumpets rang out
again, and confusedly jumbled at first, but at last
disentangled, the whole line of veterans, of young
soldiers, and of recruits — a few volunteers as well
— broke up into their separate troops and sought
the various streets of the city in which they were
quartered.

The politician and the new-made colonel went
off together to the chief hotel of the place, right
on the big square ; the one was still swaying on
foot, with his great three-coloured scarf about him,j
the other soldierly upon his horse. There was anf

2i8 THE GIRONDIN.

I omen in that sight, and many who saw it knew
[that at last the army would rule the Republic.
$But for the moment the army took orders from
JParliament as an army should ; and this new chief
of the regiment went in to draw up his list of
subordinates. Save for him and two bewildered
lieutenants, there was not as yet a single man of
commissioned rank to deal with all those hundreds.

CHAPTER XIII.

In which the Girondin, though by no means yet
a Soldier, becomes very certainly a Sergeant;
and in which a Chivalrous Fellow strikes a
Blow for the Crown.

TDOUTROUX'S mount was quartered in a stable
belonging to a corn merchant. The corn
merchant had come into that stable to see the horse
groomed, and also to see that nothing should be
stolen. Boutroux groomed with precision and
care, and as he groomed a sullen, swarthy sort
of fellow, quite thirty years of age, in the uniform
of the regiment — and a dirty uniform at that — said
to him, —

"You're wanted — you're wanted at the White
Pheasant."

" Where's that ? " said Boutroux pleasantly.

" It's an inn," said the other more sullenly than
ever, " and be damned to you ! "

" Friend," said Boutroux, " you are senior in

220 THE GIRONDIN.

the service to me, but it will give me great pleasure
to touch you up with something pointed, and
perhaps my host will lend me a crowbar or, at the
worst, a kitchen knife."

" Go to hell ! " said the other ; " you'll have
more power than you want before morning to
prod poor devils like me."

He went up to the horse and stroked it gently.

" I knew this beast before ever you were in the
regiment," he added, lachrymose ; and then, " Go
on to the White Pheasant, and don't remember my
words." So saying, he took over the grooming.

Boutroux asked of the corn merchant where the
White Pheasant might be. The dirty little inn was
pointed out to him on the other side of the road.
He went in, still dressed in his peasant clothes,
hopelessly travel -stained after the long march.
There he saw six sergeants who, when he came
in, made a loud and confused noise, and shouted
at him words the meaning of which he could not
guess at all. One of them made as though to
throw wine over him, another half drew his sword
and was repressed by a friend, but the rest laughed,
all save one — and that one (Boutroux was very
pleased to see) was his gentle friend of the march-
ing days.

" Well, Perrin," he said, " I have nominated you."

THE GIRONDIN. 221

" I don't understand," said Boutroux, bewildered,
standing up at a sort of attention, for he already
had the fear of rank upon him.

"You will understand right enough," said one
of them sullenly, "when you have to fight the
whole mess, one after the other."

"Hold your drunken tongues," said the gentle
sergeant ; " if he has only you to fight it will
be as easy as carving a pie. I have nomi-
nated you, Perrin. Do you know what has
happened ? "

" More or less," said Boutroux.

" Less than more," said his friend. " There are
just three officers left for this accursed crowd. Do
you know what I am by now ? "

At this the drunken sergeant interrupted again,
"God knows you're a peacock."

" I'm a lieutenant," said the gentle-faced sergeant
quietly ; " I've just got my commission."

" Right ! He's a lieutenant. Odd. True. Lieu-
tenant Hamard," said a large, black -haired man
at the end of the table with a deep bass voice. He
said it as though there was something of doom
in the news, but, having said it, he roared with
laughter, so odd the familiar name coupled with
the new title sounded. "He a lieutenant! and

222 THE GIRONDIN.

"And so am I," piped a little shrill fellow in the
midst ; " we're three lieutenants, we are."

"Yes," roared the man with the bass voice,
"and when it comes to making captains the day
after to-morrow, you'll be a lieutenant still."

Those who had not been so favoured laughed
uneasily. The sullen man wanted to speak again,
but he was silent. Then Hamard, Boutroux's
friend of the march, said again, —

" Well, Perrin, and you are a sergeant ! "

"And many an older man," said the sullen
fellow, " will do you a bad turn for it."

"They'll have time enough to think as the
promotions go up," said another.

The gentle-faced man continued, —

" You'll have your two companions in the mess
here within an hour, and then we've got to go
off to quarters."

Boutroux said, " May I speak to you for a
moment?"

They bowed at him mockingly, and the gentle-
faced lad took him aside and said, " I know what
you're going to say : you're going to say that you
know nothing of the service. You must do as the
others do ; you'll soon fall into it."

" But what on earth is the point ? " asked Bou-
troux, still bewildered.

THE GIRONDIN. 223

"My friend," said the other, smiling his sad
smile, " I presume that you can read and write ? "

" Certainly," said Boutroux.

" Well, Perrin, if you will believe me, in the ';
whole troop there is not one who can write a cleary
hand, and only eight that can read ; and in your j
sergeants' mess you will find that you will be the J
only one who can copy a dispatch or keep accounts.^:1
That's the reason."

" It's all very odd ! " said Boutroux.

" Revolutions always are ! " said the other, andi
went out.

That night, though the quarrel had begun be-
tween the disappointed members of the mess and
their new comrade, there was no time for quarrel-
ling. At the moment when their drinking and
quarrelling should have begun they were ordered
to the town hall, and found there, in a new medley
of uniforms, freshly -commissioned officers who
were their former comrades, and whom now they
must salute — men of the people unused to any
command save that of gentlemen ; and in the
presence of these new and strange officers re-
fraining with difficulty from incongruous laughter
and the still more incongruous oaths of the barrack
room.

They found the new sergeants of every sort

224 THE GIRONDIN.

drawn suddenly from the ranks, and files of the
new recruits who, all night long, were being
passed through for accoutrement, and dressed as
best they could be.

In the morning, after a night during which not
one-third of the force had slept, the whole body —
the new commissioned ranks, the accoutrement
staff, the recruits, and the guards — were drawn
up again in the market-place of Angouleme,
all dressed as they should be, and very deceptive
to the eye :_a civilian might have taken them all
for soldiers^ For the remounts had been put under
the most experienced men, and the recruits sat
those old, tame, sleepy beasts which were called
in the regiment " the Circus."

These scratch troops filed out, therefore, in some
order in that early morning. There were few of the
civilians about ; the Commissioner from the Parlia-
ment was sleeping out his excess of the night before.

The hussars took the great northern road,
halted at Mansle, but pushed on all that day to the
place called White Houses, seeing the haste there
was to reach Poitiers; and during the mid -day
halt, and at the great halt at night, steadily the
recruits were drilled. That force was moulded as
were all the pressed forces of the Revolution in
their thousands, swept up from countrysides, and

THE GIRONDIN. 225

drilling on the march ; and so it was to be for
twenty years.

But Boutroux (invaluable for his reading and
writing) was at the accounts of the foraging and
with the books ; and in Poitiers, where there was
to be a concentration and a waiting for two days, he
had his room in barracks, and had already begun
to learn the trade.

The cavalry barracks in Poitiers were roomy,
and the more roomy for the draining of men to the
frontier. Counting the detachment which had thus
come in from the south there were not eight
hundred sabres in the whole place, although the
buildings were designed for a full brigade.

All the regiment was there, and a maimed troop
of Royal Allemand as well ; there were fifty
or sixty of these puzzled foreign mercenaries with
silly empty flaxen heads, a little terrified at the
Storm that raged all around them, but knowing
too well how the People had come to hate such
hired fellows as they were. These poor lads kept
to barracks for safety amid the taunts, and worse, of
the French regiment. Their oflicers had gone over
to the enemy months ago ; nearly all their body
had been dissolved by revolt, by emigration, or by
disease far ofF upon the frontier, and they, alone,
who had been dispatched upon a local mission,

226 THE GIRONDIN.

remained isolated here, in the centre of the country
at Poitiers, terribly afraid. They were glad even
to do the heavy work which their French fellow-
soldiers forced upon them, making them a sort of
slaves. They dared not go into the town, for the
j town was in a ferment : lying upon the very edge
J of the Royalist districts, its municipality and its
i more active citizens exhibited an exaggerated zeal
iTor the Revolution and for the New World.

Here, in Poitiers, the men who had just come up
from the south heard, for the first time, the whole
story in detail : how the Tyrant and the Austrian
woman, his wife, and the little Wolf-cub, their son,
were held prisoners in the Temple ; how the traitors
and the aristocrats had been arrested in Paris ; how
the People were now supreme. They heard that
the armies on the frontier were crowded with
volunteers ; they heard the suspicions of treason
and the general officers' names cursed upon
every side — Lafayette's in particular, an arch
traitor — and there was more than one private of
long standing who suggested to his fellows that the
time had come for getting rid of officers altogether,
especially of those new fellows dragged out of the
ranks, whom all the cavalry detested ; but, oddly
enough, the privates found that with such an access
of liberty discipline was stronger than ever, and one

THE GIRONDIN. 227

drunken fellow, who had said a word too much,
having been tied up all day, for a show, at the
barrack gates, the rest grumbled less loudly.

Meanwhile Boutroux, under the name of Perrin,
in the Chiefs room, worked at his books, and every
hour that he could he followed drill. Boutroux
was Sergeant Perrin, and Sergeant Perrin worked
much harder than any of the sleepy-eyed horses
of "the Circus," and twenty times as much as
any of the new horses of the remounts. He was
assiduous. But, steeped in his work as he was, the
huge fantasy of the thing struck him more and
more with each new day ; and at night, when he
had done drinking with the others, he would, in
spite of his fatigue, lie awake sometimes, wondering
at this makeshift for an army : educated men — and
he had read, if anything, too much — could not
believe in it.

A colonel who had been a captain not a week
before ! Subalterns lifted up at a moment's
notice from all manner of places, most of them
still thick with the speech of the barrack room,
and still heavy with the slouch of the ranks !;
Ranks weakened by a third at least, and that third
filled up anyhow, with pressed peasants, foolish!
jingo clerks, runaway boys, and tramps who asked*
for nothing but food ; — all these grotesquely

228 THE GIRONDIN.

enough dressed in the true uniform of soldiers,
and a desperate haste and energy, hours and hours
{of riding-school and drilling, trying to make
^something of the hotch-potch ! He couldn't
believe in it.

The enthusiasm of the town helped his cynicism,
for aU^thisRevolution talk, which he had played
with in Bordeaux, seemed to him, at close quarters
with the populace, a hopeless thing.

There were black flags hung out to symbolise
the national danger ; long tricoloured streamers
pendent from the roofs and windows to symbolise
the national resolve. Now and again there would
go through the streets half-maniacal processions of
women and boys shouting against the invasion ;
and twice during the few hours he had been in
the place the house of one or another who had
been marked for vengeance had been wrecked as a
sympathiser with the King and with the Austrian.
It was a madness.

He was so much a soldier already, was Sergeant
Perrin, that he could not bear to see the two guns
stationed stupidly and permanently in the square
of the town, with theatrical civilian gunners
(volunteers dressed up for a show) standing by
them, two hours at a time, and matches in their
hands.

THE GIRONDIN. 229

But especially the Clubs vexed him. Oh, he
knew what it was, the spouting in the Clubs !
He had been through it all at Bordeaux ! And
that ceaseless rhodomontade and those perpetual
great words of Humanity, though he only heard
them reported or sounding through the open
windows of the summer meetings in the halls of
inns or dancing-places, disgusted him. He went
on with his work : they would be sent to the
frontier at last, they would be there within a
month ; and when they got there, well, they
would be broken up and torn to pieces as
" troops " of such a kind must be whenever they
were met by true soldiers.

One thing was real to him and a friend in this
hurried march of exile and of concealment. He
had a horse, a horse of his own — a white horse by
name Pascal.

They had given it him on his promotion — and
it was worth nothing, it was old. Where it came
from, whether a peasant in Vendee had bred him,
or whether he was pressed or bought, or old in
the service, Boutroux did not know.

This horse he made a friend and grew familiar
with. At everything else in that hurried way
north he wondered.

He marvelled that the Royalists made less

23o THE GIRONDIN.

show. He had been brought up in a house
philosophical upon the man's side, hard clerical
upon the woman's, but all its friendships and
connections respectable. He had imagined — as
wealthy men, and young wealthy men especially,
will do — that such an atmosphere was the atmos-
phere of the whole world ; and here, now in
Poitiers at least, it seemed to have vanished
altogether. Where were they, the men who,
before the revolt, had been ready to die for the
King and for religion, and for all that the French
had been ? On the second night after his arrival
in Poitiers he got some idea of where they were.

There was a coffee-house on the summit of that
hill town close to the wide open space called the
Place d'Armes ; it stood between the cathedral
and the town hall, and here, even in that time,
a little rest and seclusion could be found.

Few frequented it ; old clients and regular
customers, snuffy men for the most part. Bou-
troux took refuge there, not without precaution.
He did not like to leave his comrades for as much
as an hour in the day, and his need for learning
his trade took all his time. But to sit in that
coffee-house for a few moments at evening when
he was at leisure was a benediction to him. So
sitting there upon that second evening, reading

THE GIRONDIN. 231

vaguely a news-sheet come from Paris — a news-
sheet very bitterly opposed to the new state of
things and putting its opposition very plainly —
so sitting and drinking wine, he was aware of a
figure that had taken a chair opposite him and
was watching him closely.

Boutroux's sword was hanging upon a hook
behind him, he had his shako on his head, he had
even kept his gloves upon his hands : he was in
regulation dress, and had nothing to fear even if
the stranger was some authority in mufti ; but he
soon learnt that he had other things to deal with
than the regiment alone.

The stranger put his right hand closed upon
the table, called for wine himself, and when he
had done so, giving a rapid glance at Boutroux,
he said, —

" You are reading the news from Paris, sir ? "

Boutroux looked up, and as he did so he saw
the clenched hand of the stranger open very
rapidly and disclose a locket with a portrait upon
it. It was the portrait of a fat, rather silly, goggle-
eyed man in a blue coat, and there was a fleur-
de-lis stamped across it. The hand shut again
quickly. The stranger looked up at a corner
of the ceiling unconcernedly and murmured,
" You understand ? "

232 THE GIRONDIN.

"Perfectly," said Boutroux, who understood
nothing ; but he had learnt for now a fort-
night not to be off his guard. He judged the
stranger skilfully with imperceptible glances, darted
momentarily at him while he pretended to continue
his reading. The stranger was dressed in a long,
dark cloak fastened at the neck with a pin. He
wore trousers strapped .under the heel and tight
fitting, and under them one could see the shape
of riding -boots. His face was thin, long, and
hatchet-like, his eyes deep-set, arched, and sad.
Upon his head he wore a rather shabby old felt
hat set at a challenging angle. He might have
been a man off the stage or from the fair, but
Boutroux judged him right : mad or sane, he was
a rebel. '

He opened his hand again with the same abrupt
gesture and left it open a little longer this time,
so that Boutroux could see the miniature which it
held. As he did so, his face had about it a
religious look : it was not quite sane.

In an awkwardness of this kind one must make
up one's mind quickly, and Boutroux did so.

" You have a portrait of the King," he said
simply.

"Yes," said the stranger with reverence and in
a lower voice. " You are worthy of us ; you call

THE GIRONDIN. 233

him by his name. Sergeant, by what you are
reading you should be trusted."

"I have always been trusted," said Boutroux
pleasantly, laying down the paper and looking full
at his companion. " I have never been suspected,
thank God, by any one in my life. I have done
my plain duty as a soldier since, in my childhood,
I was adopted by this regiment, in which my
father served. But I am always willing to
hear."

The stranger looked troubled. "I would not
compromise any man," he said slowly, " but there
are some of us who are determined to inflict a
just punishment upon one who has committed
treason."

Boutroux looked very grave. " Not of ours ? "
he said.

"Yes, of yours," said the stranger firmly.
"The news has been sent us from Bordeaux by
the Central Association. They have traced him,
I am very, very sorry to say, to your corps."

" Who is c him ' ? " said Boutroux with wide
eyes. " What have I to do with this ? "

"Nothing," said the stranger shortly, "except

to do your duty as you boast to do. Your King

is a prisoner, but he may yet be avenged. ... In

Bordeaux," continued the stranger, crossing his

8 a

234 THE GIRONDIN.

legs and looking more indifferently than ever at
the corner of the ceiling, "a man upon whom
many of ours depended — at any rate, the friend of
many of ours — betrayed the cause. He joined the
Jacobins secretly, he raised them against his
own household (it is a damnable thing to have to
say, but he did so) ; his uncle and guardian, who
had befriended him, was arrested and now lies in
prison. He had already fled, by the ioth of
August, wisely, but the rabble had been warned by
him. ... It is due to his treason that the Rebels
had time to hold the quays in Bordeaux, and that,
when the news of the rebellion came from Paris,
they had the shipping in their hands. That man,"
he ended simply and decisively, " must suffer
death."

" A man of such power," murmured Boutroux,
"could hardly remain hidden. He must be a
very master of men ! Was he young or old ? "

"Quite young," said the stranger pathetically,
" a mere boy — barely of age."

"Tut, tut," said Boutroux, "what powers do
not revolutions reveal ! "

"At any rate," said the stranger, cutting him
short, " he is in your regiment."

" I'm sorry to hear that," said Boutroux ; " he
will get promotion ; men of that sort always do."

THE GIRONDIN. 235

"We may stop it first," said the other firmly.
"I've said it before and I say it again, if we
cannot save the Altar or the Crown, we can avenge/
them." 7

" By all means ! " said Boutroux genially, calling
for some more wine and offering it to the stranger.
" What was his name ? "

The man in the cloak pulled out a notebook
and read as follows, —

" ' Name, Boutroux, Georges. Probably adopted
an alias. Of an offensive carriage ; high, affected
voice. Talkative. Can ride ; if enlisted, prob-
ably in a cavalry regiment. Further traced
beyond Chiersac, then lost. Reported by Mel-
chior in cavalry barracks at Poitiers.' That was
yesterday," said the stranger dolefully. " Poor
Melchior was taken off to Paris yesterday upon
some charge by these wolves."

Boutroux nodded and thanked God within his
heart.

" 1 wish he were here, for he knew the traitor's
face."

Boutroux rapidly sought in his mind for the
name of any Royalist companion of his from
Bordeaux who might conceivably know Poitiers.
He suddenly remembered one.

"This Melchior," he said, looking steadily at

236 THE GIRONDIN.

the other, "was Sarrant by his family name, I
think ? "

The stranger looked back as steadily.

" I shall not tell you," he said.

"You need not," said Boutroux lightly, "but
he came round to quarters and he spotted your
man. He told me his own name in case I ought
to communicate with him."

"He did!" said the stranger delightedly.
" Poor Melchior ! You saw him ? You grasped
him by the hand ? "

"Yes, sir," said Boutroux, with a choke in his
voice. " I held him by both hands ; he was an
honest man ! "

" Now I know that you will serve us J " said
the tall, hatchet-faced one radiantly. "Can you
take me to your barracks now ? At once ? "

Boutroux pondered within his mind. " You
had better wait," he said, " until to-morrow morn-
ing at ten, about an hour before we relieve the
guard. If you will come then, I will leave orders
that the man shall be brought out to meet you
as to meet a relative. You can take him away,
and after that it is in your hands." He leaned
over and whispered in the stranger's ear, " Many
of us are with you." Then he wrote upon a piece
of paper, "The person with the order from the

THE GIRONDIN. 237

colonel asks to see his nephew." " That is all you
will have to say," he said, " but say it exactly so."

The stranger nodded mysteriously, and they
parted friends.

Boutroux, as he went back to barracks, con-
sidered. "You are a more important man,
Georges," he thought, " than I had imagined. It
seems that you have become a legend in Bordeaux.
The Royalists are after you in earnest ; and if the
Royalists, then, probably, also the Jacobins. ... It
was your fault, Boutroux, for being born the
nephew of so wealthy a man. . . . And now I
hear that he is in prison. I am sorry for that,
though I should be glad if my aunt were there
too ! You are an important man, Boutroux," he
mused as he went across the great open Place
d'Armes, with his sword-hilt caught in his arm to
prevent the scabbard from trailing, and as he went
he gazed at the ground.

" You have fame, Boutroux," he continued to
himself, "and you can see for yourself whether
you like it or no. The Royalists are after you,
and certainly the Jacobins. And as for the
authorities, for the police, for the official fellows,
if they still survive after the explosion of the last
few days, why, they must in common decency be
after you, for you killed a man. . . . Then there

a3 8 THE GIRONDIN.

is her family," he remembered as he got near the
gates of the barracks ; "there is the lady of the
coffee-stall, there is her mother, there is the cleric
in the cellar, and there is she who is dancing or
was dancing in Libourne. But," said he, looking
up to the stars as he neared the gate, " there is no
longer Miltiades : at least, not within hail."

And having so considered the situation, he
saluted the guard at the gate and went in, to lie
upon his bed as he was, booted and spurred.

CHAPTER XIV.

Showing the Advantage there is for a German,
in the Profession of Arms, that he should
know the French Tongue.

"^["EXT morning at dawn, when the roll had
been called and the horses fed, Boutroux
sent from his room for the corporal of the
guard.

"A gentleman will come an hour before the
guard is relieved," he said, "and will say that
he has an order from the colonel to see a man
in the regiment."

" Yes, Sergeant," said the corporal.

"The man he wishes to see," said Boutroux
quietly, " is Meister of the Royal Allemand."

" He is in the cells, Sergeant," said the corporal
stiffly.

"Then," said Boutroux without turning a
hair, "the man he wants to see is not Meister,
but Fritz."

24o THE GIRONDIN.

"Yes, Sergeant," said the corporal with an
impassive face. He went back across the court-
yard to the guard-house, but Boutroux threw
open the window and called after him, —

"And if Fritz is dead, some other of the
Germans. And if that other is in hospital, then
any other one. Only give him a German."

"Yes, Sergeant," sajd the corporal, saluting,
for it is the custom in that service for each rank
to salute the rank above it, and not officers only.

Next morning, just before ten o'clock struck,
Boutroux, his arms crossed upon a window sill,
watched with huge delight the advent of the
cloaked stranger. His tall figure came across
the Place d'Armes, stalking grandly ; his thin
fanatic face was determined and full of mission.
He came up to the guard.

"The gentleman who has leave from the
colonel to see one of the soldiers," he said stiffly.

Boutroux was out at once, and with the corporal
of the guard he fetched the German. The
German was frightened ; he knew little French ;
he thought that yet another practical joke was
to be played upon him, and he was right. But
Boutroux sustained him with kindness.

"That gentleman," he said, pointing to the
cloaked figure outside, " will have a word with

THE GIRQND1N. 241

you. Whatever happens maintain the honour
of your regiment, for there is not much of it
left — I mean of your regiment." And he handed
over Fritz, whom the stranger looked up and
down with a terrible eye. Boutroux sauntered
out toward them.

" Here is your friend, sir," he said, " but his
work begins again in half an hour, and we should
like him back."

"Leave him to me," said the stranger with
an exaggerated courtesy, "leave him to me,
Sergeant " — and they walked off together ; the
German infinitely pleased to. be out of quarters,
and to be going on an errand with so fine a
gentleman.

As the two went together across the market
square, Boutroux summoned a little Parisian
fellow, short and extraordinarily swagger, and,
calling him by the vilest name he could think
of for the moment, asked him whether he would
like an hour in town.

The man's eyes brightened. " I am in the
stables from now till five, Sergeant."

"I'll let you off," said Boutroux.

The man, still standing stiff, answered with a
little hesitation : " But, Sergeant, it was Serge ant
Maurat whq told me."

242 THE GIRONDIN.

" Never mind Sergeant Maurat," said Boutroux ;
"I'll make it all right with him. There's a
regimental service on," he said mysteriously, " and
I've picked you out because of your intelligence."

The Parisian was pleased.

"And I may also tell you," he added, "that
intelligent or not you will be no use in another
sixty seconds, and if you are later than that you
will very probably be lost in the enterprise on
which you are to be sent."

The Parisian wondered, but only answered :
" I'm not dressed to pass the guard."

"I'll do that," said Boutroux quietly. He
walked with the man past the guard into the
open square, nodding at the sergeant of the
guard as much as to say, "This is a message,"
and they were not challenged.

The German and his tall romantic captor had
by this time nearly reached the further end of
the Place d'Armes, and were at the mouth of a
narrow street which leads out of it towards the
steep northern escarpment of the town.

" You see those two ? " asked Boutroux.

"Yes, Sergeant," said the Parisian.

''Well, all you have to do is to find out where
they go. Once you have seen them into a house,
don't leave it ; and if the Royal AUemand doesn't

THE GIRONDIN. 443

come out in half an hour, run back and report
to me."

The Parisian was going to ask whether there
were written orders ; but being a Parisian he
thought better of it, and he went off smartly
across the square, catching his sword under his
arm and putting some pace into his walking.
He was soon but a few yards behind his chase :
he could slacken his pace and watch their move-
ments more discreetly.

Meanwhile the tall Royalist, who had sworn
to avenge his cause, and the German, with the
happy smile of release and of an hour's liberty
upon his face, had begun to misunderstand each
other.

While they were still crossing the Place d'Armes
the elder man, the civilian, said nothing, and
the young German had done no more than to
express in broken French, and in three or four
words continually repeated, how glad he was
to be picked out for town service, and how ready
he was to accomplish it, whatever it might be.
His honest, dull eyes and fat, fair face were full
of pleasure. The other answered nothing except
once in a murmur to the effect that disguises
were useless. And the German, a little worried
by such a rebuke, stumped on to the opening

244 THE GIRONDIN.

of the narrow street. Once they were within
it his guide said to him, —

" I warn you of one thing ; it will be best
to reply simply and truthfully, for whatever our
determination may be, truth will save you and
untruth will undo yt»u."

His companion, who understood no more of
this than of so much Greek, smiled largely and
said "Zo," adding the title "Captain," which
conveyed to him an expression of the highest
compliment. The Royalist quickly looked at him
again.

" You are beginning badly ! " he said sharply.

The German nodded cheerfully. " Zo ! " said
he again.

"Well," said his companion, setting his mouth,
"you may mock me now and 1 must bear with
it ; but it will not last long ! "

They turned off the narrow street into a still
narrower court, at the end of which was a green
wooden door with elaborate old hinges of beaten
iron, and above the coping of the high wall on
either side of which appeared garden trees. Some
fifteen yards within the garden a small house
stood. The faded green shutters were closed
against the August sun, and there was no sound
of movement within.

THE GIRONDIN. 245

The Parisian, when the two of them had turned
down this courtyard, peeped carefully round the
corner of it and saw them enter ; he saw the
elder man open the garden door with a key
and motion his companion in. The door shut
behind them and there was no further sound.

The Parisian bethought him that a man standing
still in uniform and watching one particular door
from down the length of a courtyard would,
in such a town and at such a moment, be very
much at a loss to explain himself if any one
of half a dozen interests had cause to suspect
him. He might be asked a question by a spy
of the police, by a chance member of the Jacobin
Club, by a plain citizen out for adventure and
suspicious of all men-^-as plain citizens at that
moment were. Being a Parisian, the Parisian
thought quickly, and his decision was soon taken.
He compared the risk of a row with his captain
in barracks — or even with his sergeant---and the
risk of a row with civilians now that all the world
was at war, and he very rightly decided in favour
of a row (if need be) with civilians. One was
hardly safe anywhere except in the Army. He
had burned his boats, or rather Sergeant Boutroux
had burned them for him, by going out of quarters
without due leave.

246 THE GIRONDIN.

He pulled down the jugular strap of his shako,
which is the sign of service ; he fastened it tightly
under his chin ; he pulled his face into an ex-
pression of official determination and solemnity ;
he drew his sword, sloped it at the regulation
angle, and began very solemnly to pace the
courtyard to and fro, up to the garden gate ten
yards, and back again ten yards, with the method
and regularity of a sentry.

" God knows," he thought, " what I am watch-
ing, but this kind of thing guarantees a man."

So regular a performance produced its effect.
His methodical and ringing steps had not accom-
plished their third turn when a window opened
from one of the three houses above the narrow
courtyard, and a fat man in his shirt-sleeves, a
butcher, looked out and hailed him.

" Who's under arrest ? " he asked.

The cavalry-man did not answer. He continued
to pace solemnly as before.

" I don't mean to ask any awkward questions,"
added the butcher sullenly, and then for a space
was silent, watching the pacing figure quite three
minutes without a word. At last he continued,
"Look here, Citizen, it's no good playing the
mummy ; we know who lives in that house better
than you do, and if the colonel in command has

THE GIRONDIN. 247

put them under arrest, the People will be with you.
They're suspect. You understand ? " He winked
beefily.

The Parisian, if he understood, gave no sign of
it. He did not so much as look at his interlocutor,
but continued to pace up and down. And every
time he arrived at the green garden door, with its
beaten iron hinges, he halted theatrically, turned
right about face, settled his hand again within the
hilt of his sabre, readjusted its angle, and took on
again his stiff but military performance.

" Oh, we know you ! " said the butcher as he
came up again, " but you needn't make a mystery
of it. I tell you the People are with you ; and
they're with your colonel. But if you do make a
mystery of it," he added a little threateningly,
" the People may have reason to ask questions."

The self-appointed sentry turned away without
a movement of recognition and began pacing again
towards the door.

Another window opened, and this time a woman's
head appeared : she was shrill, but her shrillness
was addressed not to the sentry but to the butcher.

" Put your head in, fat Thomas ! " she screamed.
"If there are scandals in our street, it will be the
worse for you ! You are drunk ! "

" I am not drunk ! " said the butcher.

248 THE GIRONDIN.

" You are drunk ! " repeated the woman, her
voice rising ; " you always are by noon ! Put your
head in ! "

" Put your head in yourself, old Sacristy Candle
Eater," said the butcher, conveying in that
epithet a contempt at once for women and for
religion. " Put your head in and mumble prayers,
or better still go and draw more wine for the priest
you are hiding."

" He lies ! " shr felted the woman to the sentry ;
" do not believe him."

The Parisian paced on as methodically as ever.

" There is no priest in this house ! And as for
wine, he knows more of it than We do ! He is a
butcher," she added by way of explanation, " and
a drunkard."

" A drunkard ! " shouted the butcher, his atten-
tion now withdrawn from the first object of his
curiosity, " a drunkard, did you , say ? Wait a
moment ! " His head disappeared.

The woman, without waiting for the onslaught
that might possibly follow, had begun to shout for
aid, other windows opened over that courtyard,
there was all the prospect of the noise and the
inquiry which the cavalry-man had particularly
wished to avoid— and which he met by continuing
his stolid pacing — when from within the little

THE GIRONDIN. 249

house behind the garden other and more sig-
nificant noises arose : mixed with loud protests in
broken French, and in a German accent, protests
intermingled with plain German oaths, came sharp
commands to be silent. The occupants of the
houses had come down into the courtyard. There
were a dozen of them ; the butcher in the excite-
ment forgot his quarrel with the old lady next
door ; a man who protested above the din that he
was a printer and needed sleep ; a companion who
told him that night was the time for sleep and day
the time for revolution, and with them the whole
company had begun an intolerable hubbub— when
the Parisian, seeing that things were looking ugly,
turned popular attention in what was, for him, the
right direction.

" Citizens," he said, speaking for the first time,
" I'm on duty before this door. I shall go through
it, and the safety of the Army is in the hands of
the People."

They applauded without any more notion of
what he meant than had he himself. He went to
the door, tried it, found it shut, and banged at it
with the hilt of his sabre. From within, the loud
protests of the German, who seemed from the
sound of his voice to be near some door or
window of the house, and half outside it, and who

250 THE GIRONDIN.

was scuffling desperately, reached them. Then
did the Parisian rise to the height of his genius.

" Open ! " he bawled.

" Who's there ? " asked a low voice within,
while at the same time the keyhole was occupied by
a human eye.

" The Army ! " said the Parisian, as though he
had behind him all the battalions of the defence.

By way of answer the eye retreated from the
keyhole, two bolts were shut, and something heavy
was heard being dragged up against the door.

Meanwhile the protests of the German had sunk
into a muffled bawling, the noise of a violent
struggle drew further and further within the house,
and the cavalry-man, forgetting all prudence, or
rather deciding instinctively which was the safer
side, took a plunge. He turned round upon the
excited gathering, which was swollen now by new-
comers running up from every side and pouring
into the courtyard, and he shouted, —

" Citizens, Austrian conspirators are at work
within, and I must summon you against them ! "

With these words half a dozen of the younger
men began to help him in his efforts against the
door : it would not yield, but with the rapid instinct
which was the note of that time three formed a
platform, lowering their heads against their crossed

THE GIRONDIN. 251

and linked arms against the wall ; two others
climbed upon their shoulders ; the cavalry-man,
sheathing his sword (he being much the lightest
of them), climbed up upon these again, and
bidding others follow, he dropped into the garden
beyond.

Those outside heard the noise of an assault, the
cries of the soldier as he struck with his sword
against not metal but wood, and one young man
after another, scrambling over the human ladder,
dropped into the garden after him to his aid.

What they saw was what they had expected :
the Parisian was standing with his back to one of
the garden trees, a table was kicked over before
him, and a chair broken ; he was swinging
his sword in circles to preserve an open
space ; half a dozen civilians were attempting to
close with him, all known to the crowd for
Royalists ; a man in another uniform (with which
the populace were unfamiliar) was held close by
two captors and was struggling hard ; at the bolts
of the door stood a man-servant more than a little
flurried.

One of the last to drop over the wall grasped
with a rapidity which any general officer might
have envied the key of the position : he hit the
servant in the stomach, hard, and while that

252 THE GIRONDIN.

domestic was recovering, he unbolted the door and
let in the flood.

The populace poured in roaring ; every man
fought with his neighbour, but on the whole the
direction of the fighting was against the inmates of
the house, and after ten seconds of rough and
tumble the two soldiers were standing apart, the
Royalist occupants of the garden were upon the
ground, handkerchiefs and shreds of clothing
were binding their hands — and the position was
taken.

Once more the Parisian rose to the height of his
mission ; he told the German rapidly in barrack
slang to fall in, and as there was nothing to fall
in to, the German stood behind him, hoping for
deliverance. He begged the noble and enthu-
siastic populace to bring their prisoners behind
him, and at the head of a procession which
dragged those unwilling Royalists captive, not
without blows, across the Place d'Armes, he led
them to quarters.

Arrived at the gate he was ready to deliver
another speech, for his success had slightly inflamed
him, when the guard turned out and with a fine
impartiality arrested the whole populace, Royalists,
and German. The fifty or so who had accom-
panied the prisoners, the prisoners themselves, the

THE GIRONDIN. 253

German in a vast confusion, and all save the
cavalry-man, to whom the movement was due, were
hurried pell-mell into the guard-room, lined on
the benches, and a guard set over them, while the
sergeant went for orders, beckoning the cavalry-
man to follow him.

The Parisian set his sabre stiffly again and
marched by the side of the sergeant with all the
strength of martial authority displayed.

"You will have to answer for this," said the
sergeant shortly.

" I'm ready," said the Parisian.
In the orderly room they found the young and
recently promoted lieutenant, Hamard, Boutroux's
companion in the early march.

" We have prisoners, Lieutenant," said the
sergeant.

The young lieutenant rose and proceeded with
them to the guard-room. He found there a
number of townsmen protesting against their
arrest ; two old gentlemen very nicely dressed but
tumbled all to pieces, one with blood upon his
hatchet face, and both bound ; their servant also
bound ; and looking more foolish than ever, the
German.

"What is all this?" asked the lieutenant,
smiling.

254 THE GIRONDIN.

" I do not know, sir," said the sergeant of the
guard.

" You don't know ? " said the lieutenant.

" No, sir ; they came tumbling in with this
man " (he pointed to the Parisian, who kept
his jugular under his chin and still had his
sword strictly to his shoulder) ; " he can tell
you.

And the Parisian told.

" My Lieutenant," he said, " Sergeant Perrin will
explain. As for me I only watched, and I guarded
a door that I was told to guard. As I guarded it
I heard proposals against the State which shall be
answered later. I know neither the rights nor the
wrongs of it, but I thought it my duty to bring
them all here."

" You thought it your duty," said the lieutenant,
musing, and with all the appearance of understand-
ing the thing from top to bottom, " to bring them
all here. You did well."

" They are of the faction," said the butcher ;
" they were conspiring against the People."

" They were suborning the Army," said a lad

not yet of age for arms. " It was I who captured

him," and he jerked his thumb at one of the old

Royalist gentlemen, who told him that he was a liar.

The lieutenant turned to the German, and the

THE GIRONDIN. 255

German attempted an explanation, but his French
failed him.

The lieutenant sent the sergeant of the guard
for the chief of the detachment of Royal Allemand,
and the chief of the detachment of the Royal
Allemand came. He was an enormous man from
Alsace, German in figure, French in bearing,
already sober, but recently arisen from sleep. He
had a voice that rolled like thunder, and his
examination consisted in a harangue.

" So you've been meddling with one of my
men," he said as he strode in. He shouted it
indifferently at the assembled civilians.

« We've rescued him," said the butcher.

" Hold your tongue ! " shouted the German,
his French glib and perfect, but his German
accent very strong. " You've been meddling with
one of my men because he's a foreigner ! It's
happened before, and it will be the worse for
you ! We won't stand it ! We won't have it !
We did for ten of you who acted thus a week
ago!"

The German humbly put in a word in his
native tongue to the effect that the honest fellows
had rescued him from sudden death.

"You shall suffer with the rest," roared the
officer ; " you were out of quarters without leave ! "

256 THE GIRONDIN.

Hamard slipped off and came back again in a
few moments.

" Sergeant Perrin has gone to explain matters to
the colonel," he said ; " we must wait till he
returns with authority." The prisoners swung
their heels, the guards guarded, the two officers
stalked up and down outside.

To these a private came running : " A corporal
and four men to the colonel, and the prisoners
with them."

Ten minutes later the corporal and the four men
were leading their prisoners across the square to
the town hall, there to guard them till the
magistrate should come. The populace had no
doubt that the Royalists whose house they had
stormed would be referred to Paris, for such was
the mood of that time.

Quarters were quiet again. The lieutenant
went up towards stables ; he saw Sergeant Perrin
standing vaguely and biting a straw. As he came
up, the sergeant came to attention and saluted.

" What did the colonel say, Sergeant ? "

"My Lieutenant, he said the Royalists were
fools ! "

" Right ! And what did he say of the mob ? "

" My Lieutenant, he said the mob were
fools ! "

THE GIRONDIN. 257

" Right ! And what did he say of Fritz and
your hussar — for you were seen to send that
hussar ? "

" My Lieutenant, he said they were both great
fools."

" Right ! And what did he say of you ? "

" He suspended his judgment, sir. Those
were his very words."

" I am glad of it," said Lieutenant Hamard
thoughtfully ; " he might have suspended you.
Dismiss ! "

CHAPTER XV.

In which an Ostler is too Political.

"^TEXT day by the relief of the guard it was
known that the conspirators, the Austrians,
were off to Paris, to the High Court under
guard ; the mob that had captured them congratu-
lated and recompensed ; and the Army formally
thanked for its zeal. A little after noon the
news went round quarters that on the morrow
they would march for the east, and it was good
news for all of them. The force was beginning
to get some shape into it, hugger-mugger though
it was, and Poitiers was getting too political ;
if there was one thing the army hated it was
politics. To be seized round the neck by
market-women and told that you were adored
for opinions you never held ; or, when what
you most needed was sleep after a long day
and drinking, to be cheered before a company

THE GIRONDIN. 259

of singers and told that you were the bulwark
of the country ; or worse still, to receive a
violent blow in a dark passage and to have
yourself called a traitor by some one whose views
upon the State you did not know and who
might very well be in agreement with you —
these were the things the young soldiers could
not bear.

The prospect of active service drew them
together and lifted their hearts, and they were
glad to be off again to the east, whither they
were bound by their trade of fighting ; and
Boutroux — to whom every march away from the
south was so much added safety — welcomed it
most ; but he had another hedge before him.

That same afternoon, as he was looking to
the grooming of the horses in the barrack square,
a civilian, an ostler, had sauntered by. He was
a man with a strong, very unpleasant face, one
who seemed moreover to take strange liberties
with quarters and yet whom no one seemed
to dare reprove ; he had come in on some
pretext and passed Sergeant Boutroux a certain
word in an undertone ; it was a word Boutroux
had known exceedingly well — once, weeks or
days ago, in Bordeaux — too well. It struck
him like a sentence of law when he heard it.

260 THE GIRONDIN.

It was the password of the Club on the night
when that little affair in Bordeaux had occupied
his former wealthy leisure.

Boutroux, as he heard that word, had no time
for plan or forethought. He replied with the
counter password : he murmured to the ostler,
as that impudent fellow lounged away, " The
Human 1(ace" a simple enough phrase and big
enough in all conscience, but it did its work ;
the ostler lounged back again. The nearer he
got, and the better Boutroux could look at him,
the less he liked his face.

The men were grooming the horses in a long
line ; Boutroux stood there overlooking them,
now calling out to one or another whom he
thought was slacking in his work, or to a recruit
who did not seem yet to have learned it. The
civilian ostler had little business there ; but
Boutroux, having heard the password and having
given the countersign, would not ask questions.
The ostler said in a low tone, —

" Sergeant Perrin, we know who you are."

" That is not difficult," said Boutroux, keeping
his temper and his colour too.

" Shall I tell you the story in case you do
not want to help us ? " continued the ostler in
that same undertone, so that no one else could

THE GIRONDIN. 261

hear, and gazing, as the sergeant did, at the
men's work and the line of horses.

" I am quite indifferent," said Boutroux, pulling
from his trousers pocket a little leaden medal
on which was stamped the triangle and the two
pillars of the Society. The ostler as rapidly
showed in his hand, open for a moment, a similar
symbol, pocketed it again, and continued, —

" These trinkets are not only useful to protect
a man : sometimes they damn him ! "

"If he betrays the Brethren," said Boutroux,
using the old ritual reply.

The ostler was silent, but in a moment or
two he said : " When do the men water the
beasts ? "

"They've pretty well done their grooming
now," said Boutroux. " I shall be giving the
order soon. Why ? "

" Because I can say what I have to say better
when the clatter of hoofs begins."

" Oh, 1 understand . . ." said Boutroux, and
in a moment he had given the order. The men
put down their curry-combs and their brushes,
one and another gave a lingering pat to his
animal ; then at the second order every man
had scrambled or vaulted on to his mount, and
was taking it off in file to the drinking-troughs.

262 THE GIRONDIN.

The clatter of the horse-shoes upon the paving
of the barrack-yard was loud, and the ostler
could say what he had to say at his ease ; he
said it shortly.

" Sergeant Perrin," said the ostler, watching
the receding line of horses with a critical eye,
and walking side by side with Boutroux as he
strolled behind the cavalcade to see that the
watering was in order, " Sergeant Perrin, I have
told you that we know who you are."

"I . . ." began Boutroux.

The ostler gave an impatient shake of the
head. " When I have done you will see whether
there is any need for you to talk," he said
brutally. "Your mother lives in the long farm-
house upon the highroad on the Bordeaux side
of Chiersac. She is an old witch of the King's
and she hobnobs with the priests."

" She is not my mother," said Boutroux shortly.

"Well then, your step-mother," said the ostler
impatiently.

" That's more like it, damn her ! " answered
Boutroux quietly.

"Just after the Tyrant was taken and the
Tuileries stormed by the People, a man who
had been hiding in the wood came to your house,
and your mother harboured him."

THE G1RONDIN. 263

"That's right," said Boutroux, beginning to
see daylight.

"You, Sergeant Perrin, were down for enlist-
ment, but you wanted some one to drive the
horse back, and that some one was the man your
step-mother harboured."

" It's perfectly true," said Boutroux stolidly.

"He drove back with the cart, and you took
the oath that evening."

" I did," said Boutroux.

"The Brethren in Bordeaux," continued the
ostler in a lower and rather graver voice, "have
sent us the report, and what you are required
upon your oath to answer is this : Where that
man is and how he may be taken."

Boutroux thought a moment. The rustic Perrin
who had driven him was a member of the
Society. So much was clear. He was affiliated
in spite of his mother, and the Society believed
him to be that rustic. So much else was clear.
That the Society wanted Boutroux, to kill him,
Boutroux knew. The last of the horses was
watered in its turn ; the file was clattering back
towards the stables. He swung slowly after
them, the ostler by his side looking at him
fixedly with his eyes and eagerly with his mind.

" I don't mind what happens to the man,"

264 THE GIRONDIN.

said Boutroux at last, a bitter note in his voice.
" I'll give every help."

" You're bound to," said the ostler gravely ;
"but you'll be the more willing when I tell you
what he did."

" What did he do ? " asked Boutroux.

" He betrayed the Club in Bordeaux, and he
killed a man on faction — one of his Brothers
in the Society."

" Did he, by God ! " said Boutroux.

" He did, by God ! " answered the ostler.
"There were plenty of things that night which
no man could understand. The man's name
was Boutroux. He went to a meeting of the
Society ; he was with the Brethren and the Section
— it's all one there — and he tried to buy orF his
old uncle."

" Did they take his money ? " said Boutroux
gently.

The ostler spat. " I don't know, and I don't
care," he said, " but anyhow the Executive ordered
the uncle's house to be guarded ; he'd had a
meeting of the traitors there that night. When
Boutroux found that that was known, he killed
the man on guard. At first we thought he
was hiding in his uncle's house, but he wasn't.
We've made sure of that, Sergeant."

to

THE GIRONDIN. 265

" How ? " said Boutroux.

"Oh well," said the ostler, laughing, "the
report says that the old chap's in jail ; the
People went through the house, you may lay
to it. It's as empty as a barn to-day."

Boutroux was on the point of saying, "And
where's the old lady ? " but he caught the
words on his lips, and turned them. "And
where's what you want me to do ? " he said,
and as he said it he thought of that familiar
house, stripped, ransacked, looted, old Nicholas
dead perhaps, or more probably flying ; fire per-
haps upon the walls of his own room, and the
great stone halls deserted altogether ; the tall
panes of the windows broken, the ironwork of
the gilt lantern twisted, and the carved oaken
doors broken in. He tasted the taste of his 1
exile, and he did not love that old hag of the jj
roadside or her son any better as he thought \
of it.

"1 told you," said the ostler shortly, "that
you've got to tell us where the fellow is ; for
you know . . ." he added, his voice becoming
threatening.

The horses were in the stables ; the men had

gone back to their barrack rooms, their work

accomplished ; the stable guard were going their

9o

266 THE GIRONDIN.

rounds, tossing the hay into the mangers.
Boutroux laid a hand upon the ostler's shoulder
more firmly than that civilian liked.

"Brother What's-your-name," he said, "1 am
not answerable to you : I am answerable to the
Society. Do they meet to-night ? If so, tell me
where, or take me there."

" Have you got night leave ? " said the ostler,
" for you will need it."

" I will try to get it," Boutroux replied. " I
shall probably have to be back by midnight."

He made an appointment with the Jacobin
to meet him at the gate that evening, and with
that appointment in mind he went off to ask
for leave.

It fell to the duty of Lieutenant Hamard to
grant leave for the troop.

" Friend Perrin," he said gently as Boutroux
came in, " I would have you stand at attention :
it is more respectful."

And Boutroux, who was already standing at
attention, stiffened himself. The lieutenant looked
him up and down.

" Your shako is on one side," he said.

The sergeant straightened it.

"And now," said the lieutenant, "it is on
the other."

THE GIRONDIN. 267

The sergeant put it back again.

" Who cleaned the hilt of your sword ? "

" I did, my Lieutenant," said Sergeant Perrin.

"When I was a sergeant," murmured the
lieutenant, "I always made a soldier do that.
Times are changing. What do you want ? "

" Night leave, sir."

" You can't have it : they will call the roll
before dawn."

" Midnight leave, sir."

"If the captain will give you midnight leave,
I will have it sent to you. Dismiss ! " he con-
cluded gently. It was his favourite word.

Boutroux swivelled round and left the room.
He knew he should find the leave on his table
within an hour, and he did. The ostler, the
Brother, came up to the gate of quarters at the
fall of evening, and they went off through the
town together.

CHAPTER XVI.

In which the Brethren of Equality and Frater-
nity are led to behave in a Manner most
Unfraternal and Inequitable; and in which
the Children of Light are unmercifully
Bamboozled.

HP HE Brethren within Poitiers (their lodge
had a name I forget) had met in the hall
once dedicated for a thousand years to St. Hilary,
that ancient bishop of the town, but for the
moment called after virtue pure and simple: it
was the Hall of Virtue.

It was packed with some three hundred of
the Brethren of every rank and kind, but for
the most part men of the middle_class of the
town — one or two women among them — and
on the raised platform at one end the bureau,
the President and the secretaries, under whom
these public gatherings were organised. The

THE GIRONDIN. 269

ostler asked Boutroux what he should tell the
President.

" Tell him," said Boutroux, " that when he
comes to my business, if he will call upon me
I will speak of the Bordeaux business. My
speech will do all that is wanted of me."

The ostler looked at him a little doubtfully,
and went off to convey that message to the
officials upon the platform. Boutroux took a
chair, sitting there in his uniform, his hands
upon the hilt of his sword and his scabbard
between his knees. His mouth was firm ; he
felt moved to take his revenge.

The President was a little nervous man, bald
and spectacled, a doctor; he opened the proceed-
ings with such a speech as Boutroux was now
familiar with, a speech like any one of dozens
of others which he had heard in the Society at
Bordeaux. But there was something more fierce j
about it and more secure, for in the interval;
Liberty had conquered. \

The plaster busts which, in imitation of the
mother -society in Paris, the Jacobins of Poitiers
had set round their hall wore, every one of
them, the red Phrygian cap which the worthy
spinners of the North of England turned out by
the thousand, indifferently, for brewers' draymen in

270 THE GIRONDIN.

their own country, for Republicans in Gaul, and
indeed for any one who cared to buy that type
of headgear.

I There was the bust of Mirabeau, the bust of
Priestley, the bust of Rousseau, the bust of
Brutus, and the busts of other of the Jacobin
saints, each wearing in a gallant fashion the red
cap cocked over its left ear, and listening to the
rhetoric of Freedom.

Boutroux himself heard in the ten minutes
of that speech more of what had happened in
Paris than all the gossip of the march and the
villagers and the mobs in the towns told him.
He heard how the palace had been stormed, he
understood what Government now held the
country. He heard the great name of Danton
cheered as a .minister and a man in power, and
he heard — as violent as ever, but with a note
of authority Trhich hitherto such harangues had
not possessed — the denunciation of treason??

Another speech followed, and another ; there
were questions from the Brethren, answered to
the best of the officials' knowledge, wild suspicions
expressed and calmed, wilder proposals listened
to and ignored.

At last his turn came.

The President told the assembly that the plot

THE GIRONDIN. 271

in Bordeaux for the murder of the patriots upon
the very eve of the People's victory in Paris
had been discovered, and that among them that
night was a true Friend of the People, a man
of that region, who would unmask the principal
traitor, who would speak to them upon the
nature of his treason, and who would later give
the Executive all the evidence that was needed
for finding the miscreant and giving him his
just deserts. As he concluded he looked at the
young soldier and called him to the platform.

" Sergeant Perrin ! " he said, introducing him
nervously. " Sergeant Perrin ... of the hussars
now passing through this town and on their way
to chastise the kings who have dared to invade
the territory of freemen."

There was loud, foolish, and violent applause.
The sight of the uniform as the young man
stepped up above them, with the swagger he
had so soon learned, and his sword caught
under his left arm, frenzied the Brethren ; the
rare sisters of the Brethren were more frenzied
still.

As Boutroux waited for that storm of cheer-
ing to lessen he wondered whether he had the
capacity to speak as he desired to speak. He
soon found, as he measured his first words, that

272 THE GIRONDIN.

the task was not beyond him. The night helped
him, and the enthusiasm, and the numbers : the
whole atmosphere of the place. He forgot his
family in the prisons of Bordeaux, he forgot
the ruined home; he suddenly recalled his clear
enthusiasms of two years before, when he had
saluted the new Liberty as a boy and had thrown
himself largely into the current of the New
World and let it sweep him along : and he
spoke extremely well.

It was a speech worthy of the Gironde, modu-
lated in the deep and rising tones which the
great river was to make famous in Paris, but
more ardent and more convinced in its creed
than anything the Parliament men of the Gironde
had given or could give. It was almost as
though the battalion from Marseilles, the volun-
teers who had just done the work and stormed
the palace, had found a voice as the young
man threw himself into the ardour of that
charge.

The Brethren stared at him, three hundred
fixed pairs of eyes : the Executive wondered
what manner of Jacobin this Bordeaux Jacobin
might be ; they envied the advantages of his
uniform, and his sword, and his youth. Later,
men remembering that speech, wondered whether

THE GIRONDIN. 273

Saint-Just had not perhaps come among them in
disguise. His vision of the society that was to
be had nearly carried Boutroux beyond his pur-
pose, but he remembered to present that purpose
as he closed.

The flame of his speech died down to a hot-
ember ; he let his voice sink and yet gather
clarity when he told them of what had happened
in his native city.

For some minutes he detailed to them, point
by point, picking one from the other with the
gestures of his hands, the plot against the
patriots, hatched in old Boutroux's house ; the
butchery of the common people that was just
discovered in time, and just failed ; how its
failure was only just accomplished by the news
of the popular success in Paris. He had not
been in the Jacobins of Bordeaux for nothing,
this young man from Chiersac, and all he said
wai a hammered gospel to his hearers.

Old Boutroux, he told them (and they believed
it), was a fool. If they made him suffer for
what had happened they would but be doing
what so many of the societies had done — an
injustice, and a wasted injustice, upon the wrong
man. They had best let him go after fining
him for the purposes of the nation . . . and

274 THE GIRONDIN.

let them bleed him well, he said, for the firm
could stand it. Madame Boutroux could no
more conspire than could an old hen : they
would be wise and merciful and humorous in
letting her go free. Many laughed and ap-
plauded as he spoke thus generously of his
enemies.

" But," he added, " there were others. . . .
First " — he raised his hand to deprecate a possible
interruption — "whether they would believe it or
no, the President of the Society of Bordeaux was
the least trustworthy of men. He had taken
money from young Boutroux ; there were wit-
nesses to prove it. He named the witnesses,
and as he did so he saw the ostler gravely
nodding. "That President," he said, "must be
destroyed."

The general movement that ran through the
crowd as he said this was one of surprise and
of awe, but not of contradiction.

"There are witnesses," he said again, and he
told their names again. "I am telling you no
untrue thing. The money was paid — a whole
thousand livres on the very night of the plot."
He was there and he had seen the thing done.
" Next as to Boutroux himself," and as he men-
tioned the traitor's name his eyes grew stern.

THE GIRONDIN. 275

" That man," he said, " I can discover to you, and
if you are wise you will advise those of our Society
who are so deputed to approach him without
warning and to take a full vengeance. He is even
now in my step-mother's house." He hesitated
a moment. "Do the brethren think I lack in
filial virtue since I so love the State ? "

The three hundred of them shouted, " No ! "

" Then I will be a Brutus and pursue my duty
to the end. Were she my own mother," he
added, with a catch in his voice, " I could not bear
to do it, but she is not. She married my father,"
his voice solemnly fell, " when I was a child ; she
devoured his substance ; he died cursing her with
his latest breath ; she has been nothing but evil to
me and to my commune and to the poor. And as
such vile things will, within her small measure she
would deliberately betray the State."

The audience sat with their mouths open.

" She was a go-between ; she took in the letters
that came secretly from the Tyrant's friends ; she
helped the escape of the traitors from this very
regiment in which I serve. I tell you she was the
soul of treason in all that part, and you must deal
with her ancj/ hers according to it. And as to the
man himself," he concluded, his voice alive with
hatred, "he sits in that house dressed in my

276 THE GIRONDIN.

clothes, calling himself her son, taking my name
of Perrin — my father's name — and thinks himself
secure. Hawks of the People ! fall suddenly upon
that nest and tear it ! "

And having said this Boutroux had done.

Never since the Society had been formed in
Poitiers had the Brethren had anything to do but
talk. Now, when first they had to act, what a
godsend was here in this young soldier ! They
pressed round him when his speech was done ;
some of the elder men took and would not loose
his hands ; they told him that he was of the kind
that saved a State ; that he was a Leader ! that he
should suffer nothing for his boldness.

When he was free from his admirers, the Exec-
utive, still jealous of so much power proceeding
from a stranger, and a speech that would eclipse all
their own, took down his exact instructions : where
the house was to be found, at what hours the man
might best be caught, how he would affect his
alias and call paid witnesses (they all knew the
wealth of the Boutroux) to swear to him, while
he, Sergeant Perrin, the true heir of that house-
hold, was slaving away as a soldier and perhaps
lying dead in the cause of the People.

Having so concluded his business, Boutroux
went out. The ostler, who had treated him with

THE GIRONDIN. 277

not too much respect some hours before, was
looking at him now almost with dread. He
begged to accompany him back to barracks.

" If you will," said Boutroux.

" The deputation will start to-morrow," he said,
" by the coach for Angouleme and Bordeaux, and
I shall be upon it."

" Well," said Boutroux simply, "do your duty ! "

" The young man shall have his due," said the
ostler ominously.

" It is well," said Boutroux simply again, " and
let the old woman have it also. But that other
traitor in Bordeaux who was President, surely you
can deal with him also summarily ? "

" We shall see," said the ostler. " He is Pres-
ident of a Society and must speak for himself, but
Boutroux we will destroy," and they parted at the
barrack gates.

Even as he came in, at the guard there were
orders and a lieutenant waiting unexpectedly.

Boutroux saluted and showed his night-leave.

"That's all right," said the lieutenant, im-
patiently glancing at it ; " are you not from
Chiersac ? "

Thought Boutroux to himself, " How curiously
these things group themselves ! . . . Yes, my
Lieutenant," he answered aloud.

278 THE GIRONDIN.

" The authorities would speak to you," said the
other, nodding at the orderly room. "They are
from the police, and they have just come."

"Anything I can do," said Boutroux grimly.
He went into the orderly room and found there
an official of Bordeaux with his legal secretary.
They were apologetic ; they would not detain him ;
they had no great business with him ; but was he
not from Chiersac ? They were on the track of a
common murderer who had escaped through that
district. A man nick-named Miltiades had been
murdered in Bordeaux, and the murderer had got
off next morning. He had been traced to Chiersac.
They had heard that Sergeant Perrin had enlisted
from near by. Could he inform justice ?

Sergeant Perrin could not at first recall the
murder ; but as the details were given him he got
it clearer, and he began to nod emphatically.

" Yes," he said, " I heard the whole story ; I
heard it from a man of Blaye. But," he added, a
little confusedly, " I feel it rather treasonable to
tell you."

"You'd better tell all you know," said the
lawyer, while the official pulled out a little book
for his notes and sharpened his pencil.

" Oh, I'm not bound in any way," said Boutroux
shamefacedly, "but I think an old man at Blaye

THE GIROND1N. 279

must have known more than he cared to say, for
when the people in the inn there pressed him he
grew silent and sulky, and at last he went out."

" The name of that witness ? " murmured the
lawyer, ready to take it down.

" I don't know his name," said Boutroux
frankly ; " I know he was from Blaye, because he
said so and everybody else talked of him as coming
from that place. I can describe him to you."

" Go on," said the lawyer.

Then did Boutroux very carefully and minutely
describe the old man of the ox-cart. When he
had done he said significantly, " If you cannot get
a clue from him, I ' doubt if you can get it from
any one."

" Will you be prepared to give depositions ? "
asked the lawyer.

" Well, I'm with the army," said Boutroux.

"But we may take your signed and sworn
evidence when we ha/e got the old man ? "

" Certainly," said Boutroux, " certainly. I will
do all I can to help."

They thanked him, and he was dismissed.

" It is a pity," said Boutroux to himself by way
of prayers that night as he fell asleep, " that one
cannot do the right thing without involving so
many other people beside one's self. But what

280 THE GIRONDIN.

would you have ? " he thought, as he gave his last
deep sigh before slumber. "One's own good is
almost always some one else's bane. And God
knows I have never hurt any that acted justly
by me."

With which meditation he fell into a very
healthy and contented sleep, and woke from it in
the first hours just before dawn to the clangour
of the trumpets and the rumour of all the quarters
for the march.

CHAPTER XV11.

In which an Old Gentleman shows the Way to
an Old Lady.

if^HE regiment marched day upon day, a long

train of straggling horses in the late summer

weather ; the new recruits were drilled evening

after evening in the market-squares of the little

towns.

Twice, at Loches and at Blois, there were
desertions ; and in the early mornings, after
summary courts, firing platoons and the shoot-
ing of men.

At Blois, also, a few more recruits came in, toe
late, one would have thought, to be used — but
in those days everything was used. The re-,
mounts were dragged from the stables of peasants,
by force and under order of -the Government, as J
they went along, not without squabbles, nor, once
or twice, without bloodshed.

They reached Orleans, and stayed for forty-

282 THE GIRONDIN.

eight hours in the cavalry barracks of the town.
The dull place was even fuller of rumour than
had been Poitiers ; the breath of Paris was UD£n_
it, and the colonel was anxious to be away, for
even in that short delay he lost ten men, and he
dared not recover them as he might have done
further down country. They left Orleans before
dawn for Chateauneuf, a short day, and one
undertaken only to get away from the constriction
of the populace and the Clubs and the turmoil
of a great town that ruined the order of the
regiment. But at Chateauneuf the rumour spread
among the men that the march would now be
direct for the frontier, and even in the little
villages of the valley the news from the frontier
had come : the armies of the kings were over the
frontier ; the invaders were on the soil of the
Nation — and Verdun had fallen.

Soldiers are not concerned with news ; but in
the minds of soldiers, even though they be
soldiers but recently civilian, every soldierly place
and stronghold has a meaning. For armies have
a sort of consciousness running through them :
the chance words of officers overheard by their
servants, the politicians of the barrack room
discussing affairs, a mere vague comprehension
of the map — all this inhabits the mind of the men

THE GIRONDIN. 283

whose trade it is to go forward by the great roads
to battle, and whose nourishment is the open air.

Verdun had fallen ; and the little town and
the hussars that had just ridden in were abuzz
with the news.

Late that night, when, with half a dozen of the
sergeants who had midnight leave, Boutroux sat,
wearied to death, in a tiny inn, he heard opinion
on fire. The men from the street mixed with
the soldiery, and one man urged another on to
violence. As he so sat — it was past ten o'clock,
and he was about to sacrifice his leave and sleep —
a man came in from quarters with an order. The
regiment was pressed to march, and the sergeants
were sent for.

They rose, grumbling ; they found in quarters
the lights and the movement of a disturbed
evening and of sudden commands. A captain,
tall, and cloaked against the night, stood at the
gate of the guard checking a paper in his hand
which one of the men on guard lit from a lantern
held above it. He murmured names and the
business of each to his non-commissioned officers ;
one after another saluted and went off about the
thing he was bidden to do. The captain's pencil
zig-zagged down the sheet, scratching out this,
adding that. He came to the name Perrin.

284 THE GIRONDIN.

" Sergeant Perrin," he said.

Boutroux saluted.

" I think you are trustworthy ? "

" I hope so," said Boutroux.

" My lad," said the captain in a totally different
tone — as he looked up under the lantern light
Boutroux saw the face of one long broken to the
service — "when you have been in the career as
long as I have, you will learn never to answer a
superior."

The refrain sounded familiar, and Boutroux
saluted again.

" Sergeant Perrin," continued the captain,
falling again into the kindly and simple tone of
a man who is ordering something very difficult,
"you will get five horses from a house which is
marked suspect." He fumbled a little with his
paper, peered at it closely with his keen eyes, and
added, " The Spinster de La Roche. Dismiss ! "

Then it was that Boutroux wished one were
allowed to ask questions in the service ; but he
knew better by now, and with the ridiculous stiff
movement which the service requires, he turned
sharply round and walked away. The captain
called after him, —

" You will take five men."

He turned round stifHy again from about

THE GIRONDIN. 285

thirty yards away, saluted, and said, " Yes, my
Captain."

He went back to the barrack room, took five
men at random ; one of them had been his equal
as a recruit in the first days of the march and
pretended to familiarity with him ; he silenced
the man, made the five fall in with this old
comrade as a sort of corporal to embrigade
them, and marched out of quarters into the
night.

The street was empty ; there were no lights ;
he had no conception of where the Spinster de La
Roche might live, still less did he know how he
would be received.

"The service," thought Boutroux, "makes of
men naturally polite a very nasty set of beings."

He knocked at a door at random : there was
no answer. He bade the men force it, and it was
forced. From the top of the rude stair within
came first a grumble as of a man half awake ;
there was the clicking of a tinder-box being
struck ; at last a light glimmered, and an old man
of surprising energy put his head over a landing
above and cursed them for a cartload of devils,
asking whether he lived in a free country or not,
and whether it was thus that a citizen should be
disturbed at midnight, and who was safe when

286 THE GIROND1N.

such things could be. To whom Boutroux
called up sharply, —

"You are required to give us direction to the
house of the Spinster de La Roche, and, if
necessary, to lead us there."

" If necessary, to lead you there ! " snarled the
old man in his nightgown, holding the candle high
above his head : " if necessary, to lead you there !
I'll lead you to hell first ! "

"No," said Boutroux, "you will do that just
afterwards."

For a moment it seemed that the old man
would give trouble : he was on the point of turn-
ing from them, and Boutroux foresaw questions
in quarters and a very bad time next morning.
But the citizen thought better of it. He re-
appeared with peasant trousers slipped over his
legs, a rough coat upon his shoulders, still wearing
his nightgown by way of a shirt, and his absurd
cotton nightcap by way of a hat, and so came
down.

" You can find it for yourself," he grumbled,
" if you will follow my instructions — the
woman's known enough in all conscience ! "
Then he chuckled.

" If your instructions are clear, Citizen," said
Boutroux, "you need not come."

THE GIROND1N. 287

The old man was a little mollified by that. He
was weak upon the grades of an army ; he did
not understand the stripes.

" Captain," he said more humbly — and the
private soldier leading the others grinned — " I
am willing enough to come, but you understand
one lives in the same town, and though the lady's
reputation ..."

" Oh yes, I understand," said Boutroux ; " but
where is it ? "

" I'll come with you," sighed the old fellow.
He fetched a ramshackle lantern, wasting an in-
tolerable time about it, and came hobbling back
with it. " Now," he said, " let us go out. It is
not half a mile."

They left the town ; they passed along a sandy
lane through a little wood to the north of it ; they
came to a high wall, pierced by a green wooden
door ; the door was moss-grown and dilapidated.

"The Chateau is through there," said the old
man.

" The Chateau ! " said Boutroux.

" She is a person of consequence," said the old
man. " I have no quarrels ; 1 am no .pojiririan ;
1 live and let live. She is a person of consequence
... of the rest I say nothing. And let me tell/
you, from what I know of the old cat, she dis-j

288 THE GIRONDIN.

likes to be disturbed, and her doors are always
locked."

" Doors give way so easily," said Boutroux,
"and it's always work for the locksmith." He
beckoned two men forward. Their shoulders
took the old green door : it did not open, but the
rotten wood of it broke, and they forced their
way through into a venerable and dilapidated
garden. A grass-grown path, once gravelled, was
before them ; the lantern light shone high into the
thick foliage of ancient trees.

" I need not go further, Major ? " said the old
man anxiously.

" Up to the house ! " said Boutroux firmly, " up
to the house ! You must remember we are
strangers here and need an introduction."

The old man went up to Boutroux's side and
spoke in a low voice, that he might not be over-
heard by the men.

"You will be kind to me," he whispered,
" Colonel ? After all, we have to live and let
live : it is a small town."

" Come along, Citizen," said Boutroux, " come
along ! " — and the old man came along.

In fifty yards they were at the moat of the old
great place. It stood awfully tall and sombre in
the night, like a huge square tower with its high

THE GIRONDIN. 289

slate roofs, solemn chimneys of two hundred years
among the stars ; the big doors were shut fast,
but a light glimmered within, and through the
glass above the entry they could see the reflection
of that light upon a carved and ancient ceiling.
Outside these closed doors swung a great bell.
They would not have found its chain in the
darkness, but the old man showed them where
to find it. Boutroux pulled it, and its loud
clangour rang through the park and the trees,
and woke echoes within the old house itself.
There was a shuffling of feet within, and (how
it reminded him of home !) a little square wicket,
grated, pierced in the door, was opened cautiously.
They were asked their business.

Boutroux gave it. "The hussars," he said.
" We are sent on requisition."

A quavering woman's voice answered, —

" I have orders to admit no one."

"Tell your mistress," said Boutroux, with his
eye to the little iron opening, and seeing within a
small, thin, trembling woman, white-haired and
capped in the manner of the district, "tell your
mistress that we are here to do no harm — but there
is urgent business from the Army."

She bade him wait. She kept them waiting
there a good quarter of an hour, and when she

290 THE G1RONDIN.

came back said, as pompously as her thin cracked
voice would allow, —

" My lady will receive you."

" Give her my best regards," said Boutroux,
"and bid her have no fear at all. It is the
business of the Nation."

The great doors were opened, creaking ; the
light from within poured upon the park.

The old man said anxiously, whispering again,
"Need I stay?"

" No, Citizen," said Boutroux, " you are free
of these things."

" You will not give my name to her ? She has
many friends — too many ! " said the man anxiously.

" I would, of course, betray your name if I
knew it," said Boutroux doubtfully ; " but I do
not know it. However, I will guess at it."
\ The old man eyed him misunderstandingly, and
made off. He had no love for the politics of his
time, and as he went back through the darkness to
his disturbed repose he loved them less than ever:

"The world," said he to himself, "is coming
to an end ... so it was foretold ... so it was
fpretold. Old Stephen's niece, whom he forced
to be a nun in Orleans, foretold it. . . . She was
right, it is the end of the world ! " And so
muttering, he went back homewards.

CHAPTER XVIII.

In which an Old Lady shows the Way to a
Toung Gentleman.

"DOUTROUX entered the hall out of the night
with his five men. He heard behind him
a joke that did not please him, and he turned
round sharply.

" Fixe ! " he shouted.

They shurHed into a sort of line ; he bade them
put up their arms and take their places upon the
oak bench with its fine carved end, that ran
along the stone wall.

" If anything goes amiss to-night, I shall make
it the worse for you," he said ; and as he said it, he
looked at the man who had presumed upon his
ancient comradeship, and the man was afraid.

As he turned round from saying this, he saw
coming towards him the mistress of the place, and
he heard a very pleasant, gentle, somewhat ironical
voice saying to him, —

292 THE GIRONDIN.

" To what do I owe your visit, Lieutenant ? "

" The number of ranks," thought Boutroux,
" through which a man may pass in time of revolu-
tion and of war is infinite ! . . . Madame," he
answered her aloud, "it is a very small matter.
Five horses were requisitioned, and they have not
come."

" They were requisitioned, Lieutenant," said the
lady, speaking like fine metal, like silver tempered
to steel, "a month ago. I have since held them
ready ; no one has asked for them . . . and now you
come for them at midnight and in arms ! "

Boutroux, standing straight, with his sword in
its scabbard, respectfully held and low, as might be
that of a gentleman with some message to give,
took her in. He remembered the term " suspect "
in his orders, and he watched her well.

She was not tall nor large in body, and yet she
was not frail : there was something of self-posses-
sion, if not in her soul, at least in her carriage, and
a pretty dignity of movement. She was dressed
all in black, with white lace at her throat and her
wrists ; her hands, he thought as he watched her,
were singularly small and strong. They were
clasped before her. Her hair was grey, with
touches of a whiter grey in it ; it was her own
hair. Her face still wore that light ironic smile,

THE GIRONDIN. 293

and her eyes were very pleasing : they were black,
and they had in them, as she watched him, an
expression which provoked him not a little to
know more of her.

" Madame, I have no written order," said
Boutroux, seriously moved. " I intend no dis-
courtesy— but the Army is in urgent need. If I
had a written order it would be easier."

" There is no need for that, Lieutenant," she
answered in a lower tone, and with a charm-
ing submission. "The Army may do what it
wills."

" But I will give you the receipt and the claim,
and all that you may ask for verification," con-
tinued Boutroux eagerly. " I really regret, I very
greatly regret . . ."

" You need not regret, Lieutenant," she said.
" We must all do our duty. And now let me
tell you. . . . But wait a moment : I will call a
man."

She left the hall : her light steps sounded fainter
and fainter as she traversed the house to her
offices. She came back with one of her grooms,
low-browed, solemn, and resentful.

"Louis," she said, "you will accompany these
gentlemen : they have come for West Wind,
Pericles, Queen, Furtive, and Basilisk."

294 THE GIRONDIN.

The groom touched his head. " Basilisk can't
go out, my lady," he said.

" Why not ? " she asked.

" He's lame, my lady," said the groom.

" Is it bad, Louis ? Does it prevent his work-
ing?

" Yes, my lady," said the man more stubbornly
than ever.

" Why, all the better," said she cheerfully, this
unexpected lady of the night. " I could wish they
all had such a complaint. I could wish they had
each but three legs a-piece," and she smiled at
Boutroux, who gravely and slightly smiled in
return. " Horses which are needed by the Nation,
Lieutenant, are at the disposal of the Nation >-and
these are the five that were requisitioned, name
for name. I regret that one of them should be
lame."

" Madame," answered Boutroux solemnly, " I
have had stiff legs in the saddle myself, but I have
not been excused from marching."

"Louis," said the lady, turning to the groom,
■"take these gentlemen with you." She pointed
to the five soldiers. " Do you requisition saddles
also, Lieutenant ? "

" Well, Madame," said Boutroux, " it is not in
my orders, but I confess that horses without

THE GIRONDIN. 295

saddles, though the easier to ride, are impossible
for the service. There is this and that and the
rest . . ."

" But you cannot expect me to have campaign
saddles ? " she said.

" Madame," he said, " no doubt we shall find
them when we join the main body."

" No doubt," she said, " no doubt. . . . Come,
Louis, take these gentlemen away ! "

The groom, with the worst of wills, led off the
lumpish soldiers.

" And you, sir," she said, turning to Boutroux,
" pray come in and take wine : it will not be a
short business, only two of the horses are in the
stable here. Two others are at the farm at the
end of the park, and one will have to be caught.
He is out at grass."

" I am at your orders, Madame," said Bou-
troux.

She led him through two great pikes where
tapestry hung, and of which the floors were of
uneven chestnut, glazed to a polish by many
generations of coming and going. In one of these,,
which was her dining-room, she picked up a flask
of wine and a glass for him. She stooped to find
bread in a sideboard : it was too low for her, and
she went down upon one knee.

296 THE GIRONDIN.

Said Boutroux to himself : " What queens one
finds upon the march ! "

She brought out the bread and the flask ; he
took them from her.

" Really, Madame," he said, " I cannot allow . . ."

"Oh, be silent ! " said the lady lightly, "we
know the Army here ! " And then she added :
" Lieutenant — Verdun has fallen ! "

" Yes," said Boutroux, to whom that news was
of no great weight at such a moment.

' They went together into a little room through
the door, a room with a tall ebony bookcase in it,
a little marble chimney-piece, and the conventional
sham gold clock of the time, with a looking-glass
behind it. The little room was full of the scent
of late roses, of which a glorious group stood in a
jar upon her table. Upon that table also there
was a book laid open, as though she had but just
left reading it. He did not see the title of the
book, and he wondered what it might be. Two
candles stood upon that table, still and unflickering
in the dark summer air. Their light shone on a
terrace without.

" The night is warm, Lieutenant ; we will take
this wine for you, and this bread, outside and put
them upon a little iron table that is there, and
sit there until your men have returned."

THE GIRONDIN. 297

Boutroux was willing enough. She followed
him out to the terrace, and as she followed she
blew the candles out.

That small enclosed park was fragrant in the
August night — it was secluded. One might
dream in it, in such a night, that there were no
such things as grooming and marching and arms.

There came from time to time a country noise
from the distant village, the sharp bark of a dog,
or the lowing of a beast in a stable : the faintest
and most distant of those sounds could be heard
through the clear summer air ; and above them,
shining through warm heaven, was a wilderness of
stars.

" Lieutenant," said the lady, " are you for the
frontier ? "

" Yes, Madame," he said, " and all the regiment."

For a few moments she kept silence, and then
she said, —

" I envy you, Lieutenant."

"It is plain .truth, Madame," he said, "that
people told me your house was suspect ; but I do
assure you, by my lack of a beard, that I will keep
faith with anything you say, for I am neither with
one set of the dogs nor with the other."

She laughed gently in the darkness.

" When you are my age, Lieutenant," she said,
10 a

298 THE GIRONDIN.

" you will be more certain of that than ever, and
you will only take sides in the things to which your
heart moves you. . . . No, the house is not
suspect . . . but I regret the better times." She
drew her shoulders together ; he could just see
the movement : he thought she was cold, in spite
of the warmth of the hour, or that she felt the
dampness of the moat. He went in without her
bidding, fumbled in the dark room, and at last
brought out through the open window a shawl
that he had noticed cast across the arm of a chair ;
he put it round her, not hastily.

"I have heard," thought Boutroux to himself,
as he lingered upon this gesture, " that a woman
is not a woman until she is forty : now this lady
is certainly a woman."

She thanked him, and she said, —

" Lieutenant . . . ? When do you march ? "

" I do not know, Madame ; too soon, whatever
the hour may be."

"But to-morrow ?" she said.

" Yes, certainly, Madame, and more probably this
very night."

"You soldiers never sleep," she replied to
him, in such a tone of pity that he was moved
again.

" But when we sleep, Madame, we sleep sound."

THE GIRONDIN. 299

"Yes," she said, "you sleep sound."

He wondered what the Army was to her, and
why she spoke so of the Army. She went on, —

" Lieutenant, will you do me a favour ? "

" Madame," said Boutroux with singular alert-
ness, " I will do you any favour that is within my
power, and most of those that are not."

"You have spoken as a man of the trade
should," she answered nobly. "Do you know,
Lieutenant, we women who stay behind love men
who will do what is asked of them by the Nation
... or by any other dame."

"Aye, Madame," he said, "and we soldiers love
to be asked it . . ."

She asked what he did not expect.

"Why then, Lieutenant, tell me, I pray you,
while those clodhoppers are stealing my cattle,
tell me how you came to be in the service, and
to be marching thus. Had you ever the King's
commission ? "

His eyes were used to the darkness, the haunt-
ing light of the summer stars glimmered upon
the gracious curves of her grey and silvering
hair, but her eyes were quite in shadow. Her
face was turned towards him, and he could
imagine many things.

I will tell you the truth," he said gravely,

u

300 THE GIRONDIN.

pausing a little before he answered, " I never
held a commission of the King's."

"Then why are you here?" she said. "Was
it the invasion that stirred you ? "

" No, Madame," said Boutroux more gravely
still, " not even the invasion, though I trust I
should have done my duty. Shall I tell you
the whole story ? "

"Why," she said, with a little laugh, "that
is just what I have asked you to do."

Boutroux let his head fall back in the darkness,
and stared up at the great stars.

"I am by birth," he said slowly, and thinking
at large, "I am by birth the son of a lawyer in
Paris, a Judge of the High Court. My father
was, and is, the kindest and tenderest of fathers.
He designed me in marriage — it was before the
troubles, Madame ; it was before these worries that
I hate, and do not understand — he designed me
in marriage for a young lady against whom I
have nothing to say. She had every grace and
quality and charm, and a dowry, as I was given
to believe, of three hundred thousand livres."

" It is a large sum," said the lady gently.

" It is a large sum, Madame," agreed Boutroux,
shrugging his shoulders, " but it was destined never
to be mine."

THE GIRONDIN. 301

" Indeed ! Pray tell me more, for I am inter-
ested."

" It is a simple story, Madame." He drew a
deep breath, which is a kind of inspiration, and
continued, —

"The lady who brought me up, you must
know, was neither a nurse nor a governess, but
something between the two. With her daughter
I played as a sister, and we grew up together."

" Boy," said the lady here, " I see what is
coming."

"Ah, Madame," said Boutroux, "then you are
far wiser than I. . . . Sht died."

" She died ? " said the lady, surprised.

"Yes," said Boutroux, leaning forward, and
holding his scabbard between his knees, and
letting his voice sink profoundly, " she died : a
purer, nobler, more. . . ."

" Yes, yes," said the lady. (Far ofF at the end
of the little park lights were coming, and time
was short.) " I understand," she ended rapidly.

" You understand, Madame," said Boutroux
with a sob.

"And so you are here ? "

" And so I am here ! " said Boutroux simply.

" Did you enlist, since you say you have not
the King's commission ? "

302 THE GIRONDIN.

" I enlisted, Madame ; I enlisted at St. Denis
at the cavalry depot. I was in the ranks for
two years."

The lady leaned towards him, and consented
to put a hand for one moment upon his hand.
Boutroux was willing ; no movement of his
condemned the gesture. The lights from the
end of the park were approaching, and they
could just begin to hear the loud banter of the
five soldiers quizzing the groom.

" Men do not often rise as you have risen,"
she said. " Tell me before we part how you
obtained your grade."

" It is a curious story, Madame. An old
gentleman whose name I did not know, but
who had evidently great authority, was for
promoting me with an indecent rapidity. I
had already been named a sergeant for some
weeks, when he urged me successively up the
ranks of lieutenant, captain, major, and even
colonel."

" It is incredible ! " said the lady, staring at him
with wide eyes.

"Yes, Madame, incredible, and, as I thought
at the time, ill-judged, and even ignorant ; but
so it was. I paid but little attention to his
patronage ; I did not believe that he had any

THE GIRONDIN. 303

real power. What gave me my commission,
and that to which I owe my lieutenancy, was the
very generous act of a woman."

" Really, Lieutenant," said the lady, " women
seem to have played a part in your life ! "

" Ah, Madame," said Boutroux solemnly, " 1
never knew how much until to-night."

" And so," went on the lady, a little too rapidly,
"it is to a woman that you owe your title of
lieutenant, you very young man ? "

" It is, Madame," said Boutroux.

cc Did she know you well ? "

" No, Madame, nor I her ; but for a brief
moment upon a summer night I loved her well
enough."

"What power had she to give you such
advancement ? "

" Nothing, Madame, but her word ; yet her
words were of a sort and spoken in a tone
which I will long remember."

The horses moving up the drive, their pace
upon the stones of it, the men leading them,
and the grumbling of the groom, were now close
at hand. She rose unwillingly.

They went into the darkened room together,
and as she passed before him through the open
windows she said, in the lowest of voices but

304 THE GIRONDIN.

one as clearly heard as a summons, "We are in
no haste to join the others." It was some little
time before either spoke again. When that
silence broke, she broke it first in a changed
voice, still holding him in the darkness.

" You march before dawn ? " she asked.

" Madame," he said, standing before her in
the night, " I have told you : we go when we
are ordered, and I believe that the orders will
come by daybreak or before."

"Well," she said, catching at her words, "I
shall ask from you a receipt . . . and a due note . . .
I can give you nothing more in exchange."

She lit the candles again in that little room ;
he seemed to remember a room which he had
known, not for a few moments, but for some
days. She wrote in a delicate and clear hand
the note of the horses' names, the description
which she had afforded of them to the officials,
and she put the paper before him to sign. He
signed it. Neither had looked at the other's
eyes. She sanded the ink and dried it ; she
folded the paper with his signature upon it, and
put it into her bosom.

"And now," she said, "Lieutenant, Lieutenant,
I can give you nothing more ! "

" Why, Madame," said he, " your good wishes."

THE GIRONDIN. 305

"Well, you have had more than that," she
whispered, and Boutroux followed her into the
hall. . . . Before the great door of it were the
five horses and the men, and the groom stand-
ing sullen ; they had waited too long.

Boutroux once outside her door, and standing
at a horse's head, turned to the lady of the house
as she stood with the light upon her watching him
go. " Have I your leave to mount ? " he said.

" All my leave to all you will," she answered.

" Then," said Boutroux to the groom, " which
horse did you say was lame ? "

But the groom muttered : " I take no orders
from you."

One of his men said, " This one, Sergeant,"
leading up a brown mare of no capacity. Boutroux
took the stirrup iron in his right hand, and meas-
ured the stirrup leather against his left arm. " It
is my length," he said, and he mounted. With
the first movement of his mount he thought, " No
more lame than I — less ! " He drew his sword
and saluted as he left that house, then he sheathed
it again.

"Louis," said the lady — it was the last time
he heard her voice — " show the lieutenant to
the great gate and bid them open it. Lead the
lieutenant ! " she added sharply.

306 THE GIROND1N.

" Sergeant ! " muttered the groom to himself.

The doors shut again upon her, and the little
troop went up to the great stone pillars and the
wrought-iron gate, where a light in the lodge
was already awaiting them, and some figure was
moving in the darkness to open.

Riding behind his men Boutroux could not
forbear to look over his shoulder ; he saw, or
thought he saw, near a light upon the first story
the head, and the inclination of the body, and
the gesture with which an hour's acquaintance
had too much accustomed him. But he turned
and went through the gate, and he said to the
groom as he did so, —

ftWhen they press you for the wars, my man,
try to be under my command ; and if I am colonel
by that time — for my promotion is rapid — I will
see that you have an easy time — in prison."

The man answered him with a fine curse, and
they parted.

CHAPTER XIX.
In which it Rains.

TT was broad daylight of the next morning
when the long column of cavalry on its
eastward way out from Chateauneuf filed along
the highroad past those same gates again.

Boutroux saw the wrought-iron gates and the
stone pillars, which had stood so strangely out
under the lanterns in the night, now much older
under the freshness of the new day ; dead leaves
were beginning to fall from the avenue of trees,
for that tragic autumn had come early ; the
statued edge of the moat, and the ancient house
behind it, carried upon them in the daylight
every mark of^ecay.

The shutters of it were closed fast ; there was
moss, and here and there a growth of yellow
flowers upon the stonework of the walls. It
was but a glimpse down the avenue as the
regiment trotted past ; in a moment the trees

308 THE GIRONDIN.

and the high park, wall had cut off the sight.
But in that moment there occurred to the young
man's mind a phrase : that things differ within
and without, and that what they seem at night
they seem not in the morning. He carried
the phrase and the picture of that deserted and
ancient place ; he carried it within him for miles
of hard going.

From that day the march proceeded with an
increased anxiety about it and an increased haste :
the work was harder night after night, the leisure
less, the tests for sickness or for leave more
severe. And still as they went eastward they
came nearer to the flavour of the war.

The emptiness of the land after the harvest,
the stubble and the lack of men in the fields,
increased that impression of doom. September
was entered, the first week of it was half gone ;
they were still urged forward.

The men understood nothing of all this save
that the crisis had come, and that these pressed
marches, the saddle sores, the horses left behind,
the remounts of every sort and kind, the haste
and anarchy of the whole business, was a race
to join the front.

Such of them as could form some idea of
the map ot the country understood where the

THE GIRONDIN. 309

march was leading, and wondered when they
should find the main body. But for the most
part the non-commissioned ranks had no con-
ception beyond their daily task, which they cursed
and hated. The progress eastward was becoming
for every one a sort of despairing thing.

At Sens they met a regiment of the line and'
saw mixed with it the volunteers, and witnessed, in
spite of the care of their colonel to keep the cav-
alry apart, the complete breakdown of authority.

At Troyes Boutroux sickened, in the evening
after the horses had been groomed and fed,
to see a mob hurrying some wretch or other,
a priest it seemed, to his death.

Through such scenes, like ghosts or men
apart, not understanding, broken by fatigue and
by the pressure of their going, went this hotch-
potch of cavalry, until, when it was already
mid-September, they drooped, under a pouring
rain, sodden, bewildered, meaningless, into Bar-
le-Duc.

The high town upon its hill, old, dark, and
inhospitable, was, they had heard for days past,
to be their point of junction with the main
army. Even the private soldiers, to whom such
marches are dull, incomprehensible things, were
alive to that ; the names of Kellermann and Bar-

310 THE G1RONDIN.

le-Duc were mingled in their minds : each stood
for order and a regular provisionment, and in
the drizzle of that unhappy month every one
hoped for fires and warmth and companionship,
and for some rest from such intolerable fatigues.
But no one of them save here and there a
broken veteran of earlier campaigns, promoted
to a commission and prepared for any mis-
fortune, could expect what awaited them. When
they reached the guard at the gate, they found
formal orders : they were not to enter the town.

For hour after hour, until the dark had fallen,
they stood dismounted, waiting emptily before
the western gate. They had eaten last at noon
in St. Dizier. A few begged bread of the guard ;
the rest fasted. There came orders to the
officer in command — orders which, until far into
the night, took no effect ; and at last the broken
men must mount again and turn, back through
a blinding rain that was now in their faces,
back upon the way by which they had come.

The private soldier, who never understands,
grumbles as a part of his trade ; that night
he would have rebelled had not the insufficient
handling of the long march and the insufficient
training of the men so far sufficed as to preserve
in this critical moment some sort of unity.

THE GIRONDIN. 311

Boutroux rode by the side of his wretched
lot. He communed with his old white horse
Pascal, and called it his friend, and begged it to
be cheered. He bade it note that never was
a thing so bad but soon it would probably be
worse. He conjured it in the name of their fast
friendship not to fall down in that night and die.

Pascal went forward ; the rain streamed down
the soaked hair of his scraggy neck. He had his
fill of soldiering. His poor horse-soul was ready
for the end.

Hamard the lieutenant was in command of
that troop : captain they had none. The young
officer knew the ranks and how to deal with
them : he was not six weeks commissioned, it
was not two years since he had groomed his own
horse as a private, and of such stuff the best
subaltern command in these armies was made.
The open complaints of the men were nothing
to him ; he left the rough to his sergeant.
Boutroux did the work with his own few,
cursing and jeering by turns, over-looking,
accountable for his number. There was the
worst of example around.

In the troop before them was disorder. One
young fellow of a brutish sort had let his jaded
mount fall in the later hours of that bad night ;

312 THE GIRONDIN.

he had stepped out of the saddle as one might
step out of a chair, and had said, —

"The beast will die there, and I shall lie
down too " — saying which he had thrown him-
self at full length upon the mud by the road-
side, and no one had disturbed him : the regiment
rode on.

Another, half an hour later, took the occasion
of a driving gust which blinded them all, to
veer off as they passed through trees and to
be lost to the service. It was three in the
morning when the miserable column, not seven
hundred sabres, huddled into the town of St.
Dizier, through which they had passed fifteen
hours before on their way eastward at noon ;
there at last they were told by sections that
they might rest.

The foragers had gone before ; the house,*
were numbered in which the few privileged
might sleep, and the barns in which the many
must throw themselves, drenched as they were,
upon the straw. There was no provision. A
butcher's shop, with the iron shutters tight
fastened, and the gilded ox's head which was
its sign dripping rain in the darkness, stood
upon the street where Boutroux's troop were
gathered huddled, a-foot, holding their unhappy

THE GIRONDIN. 313

beasts in the pouring darkness, and waiting for the
appointment to shelter.

Boutroux, not yet dismounted, went up to the
lieutenant and said : " My Lieutenant, the men
must eat."

The officer answered : " I have not eaten."

" My Lieutenant," said Boutroux, " may I ask
the people in this house for food ? "

" It is my place," said the lieutenant.

All ranks were confused, and all order and
discipline in peril, save that a score of bedraggled
and wretched men in their utter fatigue looked ,
upon these two for succour.

Boutroux struck heavily at the door of the
house ; there was no answer, and the only noise
he heard when the echo of his scabbard against
the wood had died was the sedulous drumming
of the rain. He dismounted, holding his own
horse, led it, and going himself close to the door,
at the length of his bridle he charged it with the
full strength of his shoulder ; it broke open, and
a tiny night light showed a flight of dirty stairs
and a gaping passage-way within.

The lieutenant held out his hand and took
Boutroux's bridle to leave him free. He said
" Thank you, my Lieutenant," and went within.

Those who dwelt in the house above lay low ;

3H THE GIRONDIN.

they either did not hear or would not hear. Bou-
troux picked up a piece of paper that lay greasy
and long upon the foul steps, twisted it, lit it
at the night light, and held it above his head in
the shop. A great piece of meat hung with
twenty others upon their hooks near to hand ;
it was heavy and he was very weak with the
march and fasting ; he slung it off somehow
and staggered with it outside. The men, who
saw him in the darkness and under the rain
carrying some burden, smelled and knew that
it was meat. Two of them laughed, and another
called out to him with praise and affection, calling
him by the nickname that his men had chosen.

The little pack of them went off to a barn near
by, took the dry straw, made a clear space upon
the flags so that the fire should not catch ; they
lit the straw, they broke off projecting ends of
planks and weather boardings, and one way and
another they made a smoky fire. The poor beasts
that had carried them were tied up as best they
could be, to the rings and pillars of the high dark
place : outside the rain fell soddenly.

One man had found a lantern and had lit it.
No one concerned himself for guard or sentry,
but Boutroux and the lieutenant saw to it that
before anything else was done, two men should

THE GIRONDIN. 315

take pails that were there and find water, which
they did from the pump of the market square,
and taking it in turns, and each as he was so
ordered, upon the point of rebellion, they came
back and forth until all the horses were watered.
Until this was done the men might not eat.
There was no corn under that great wooden
roof, but there was a little scattered hay which
was seized for the horses, and straw in abundance ;
this also they ate eagerly. Boutroux came round
in the darkness to his old beast Pascal, where
its white coat glimmered like a long ghost in a
corner of the barn. He told it that things of
this sort lasted but a little time for horse or
man ; he hoped his horse was as proud as he
was to serve the State, and he stroked its nose
to cheer it. He thought he felt the foolish
brute lean its head towards him for companion-
ship.

Before the fire Boutroux could smell the toast-
ing of the meat upon jack-knives and bits of
pointed wood sharpened for spits. One of the
men, under some influence of habit, had asked
the lieutenant to distribute the rations. There
was plenty for all. Not a few in their desperate
need were sucking the raw meat before they
toasted it, and no one asked for bread. But

316 THE GIRONDIN.

in an extreme thirst several plunged their faces
into the buckets from which the horses had
drunk, full of the slime of them, and drank as
beasts drink. . . . And that is the way in which
twenty of the regiment passed the night in St.
Dizier in mid-September of 1 792.

A cannon-sound away, not more, the great army
of the invaders had forced the line of the Argonne
hills . . . and these men, in such a plight and
under such a discipline, were a grain, a drop,
in the many thousands such, who were to attempt
battle against Europe — such scenes, such ignorance
in the dark, such despair in the rain, are for
soldiers the chief part of war.

When they had finished their eating, some
upon the raw, some upon the toasted meat, and
had lain in their drenched clothes in a stupor
for perhaps two hours, a trumpet called, cracked
and pitiful, in the street without : daylight had
come through the great doors of the barn, and
the lieutenant and Boutroux, first rising, aroused
their men.

There was no grooming done in that morning ;
the steady, drenching pour of the rain outside
still broke their hearts ; one man, a young man
not long from his cottage in the South, could
not move : he moaned to himself, and they left

THE GIRONDIN. 317

him there, but his horse they took with them,
seeing that there were more men than horses
left in the last night end of the march. The
beasts were given a few more wisps of the hay,
a few more broken and cut handfuls of the straw.
They were all still serviceable : that is, their lean
bodies, their raw sores, their matted and uncleaned
coats, had not yet brought them to death ; but
as cavalry goes, those hussars were not models
of cavalry to see.

All that night only the girths had been loos-
ened, for accoutrement that morning the girths
were tightened only. Scabbards and stirrup irons,
curb-chains and bridle rings, were a mass of rust as
they came out into the daylight. Some of the
men were so stiff they could not mount, but
had to swing painfully into the saddle from low
walls ; others had taken the night more easily,
and were ready even to crack jokes in a low
tone with their neighbours : as they mounted
and proceeded up the main street of St. Dizier,
trumpets continued to sound the assembly in
cracked and mournful and unfinished notes. The
rain still steadily poured, and they set out for their
last twenty miles to where, as all the townsfolk
told them, Kellermann and his army now did
really lie in mass at Vitry.

318 THE G1ROND1N.

Such is the life of soldiers that to ride so
upon broken beasts in the rain, a straggling
mass of hundreds, with no end before them and
no knowledge of their goal, yet raised their
hearts because through the dull rain it was yet
daylight, and the hell of the hours before their
sleep had been the dark hours of a hopeless
night.

At Longchamp their spirits further rose, for
there all the marks of a regular advance were
apparent, the chalked numbers were on the doors
of the houses and sheds and stables, even the
sick who had been left behind were a proof
of the great army that lay before ; and best of
all, some sort of provision had been organised.
They ate and drank human food and drink ;
there was wine for the few that could buy it
and the many that could steal ; there were
detachments of the soldiery already apparent ;
there was bread, and, for the first time in how
many days, hot coffee in tins.

They left Longchamp by noon for the last
stretch of the road, expecting the Army.

At three o'clock in the afternoon the rain
ceased, the skies lifted somewhat, the landscape
for a few miles could be discerned, and a great
town of canvas, the tents of the line, lay apparent

THE GIRONDIN. 319

far off upon the sloping flank of a high land
beyond ; they heard the distant bugles. They
came to pickets, they saw moving over fields
in the distance large ordered bodies of men,
and when the column halted and was given its
orders for stabling and for quartering, it had
already mixed in spirit and largely in body with
the twenty thousand and more which Kellermann
was leading to join Dumouriez.

Just before those thousands in their drenched
clothes, with their hobbling horses, their limping,
footsore men, their torn and lost accoutrements,!
their insufficient and haphazard guns, lay, one;
long day's march away, the roll of empty land,j
the great marshy plains, where they were called
to meet the strict and brilliant army of the
invasion.

Had any one man seen and appreciated those
two — the huddled regiments at Vitry, and the
noble parade of the successful invasion which
had just turned the line of the Argonne, and
had now nothing between itself and Paris — he
could not for one moment have hesitated in
his decision. If indeed there was material for
contest, that contest would be swiftly decided.
For here was a mob unbroken to the trade, all in
disorder, hopeless with fatigue and lack of food

320 THE GIRONDIN.

and sleep and ceaseless rain ; and there was
the last and the best of the instructed armies
of Europe.

But no man so saw the contrast : only Fate.

The men that were thus massed and huddled
under Kellermann, after the storms of rain and
the mud and the hunger and the death of that
marching, were not trusted to accomplish any
achievement. They had but to go forward ; and
they must perish.

CHAPTER XX.

In which it goes on Raining.

TT was on the 15th of September that the
regiment, if it could still be called a regiment
at all, so joined the main army.

When the morning of the 16th dawned, the
stable guards, the pickets, and the long line of
bivouacs in the fields beyond the houses were
content to remark that once again it was raining.
Far off, up the valley under the rain, a long
line of men already moving was Kellermann's
advance upon Sampigny, where lay the workshops.
No sound yet heard of distant firing reached
the hollow of the Marne, no rumours of an
enemy's approach ; there was nothing but the
rain veiling the landscape, the low sodden hills
under it, and the swollen river running turbulent
and brown.

With the early morning yet another great

bulk of the army broke off for the march on

11

322 THE GIRONDIN.

Pogny ; but the hussars, and Boutroux with
them, had received no orders. The horses
were more important than the men, now that
they had come to a country too thickly occupied
for the gathering of remounts ; the beasts were
tended therefore, all that morning, under cover,
cleaned more or less, and restored after the bad
business of the countermarch from Bar-le-Duc
and the days and the nights of weather. There
was even a trifle of leisure in the force, and men,
after the grooming, got into the taverns together,
watching the pelt of the rain outside, but at least
comforted by wine.

/ The townsfolk loved the soldiers less and

/less, and these last comers were given nothing

(for the sake of their trade. There was a sullen

\truce and no more between the civilians and the

Army.

The noon meal had been eaten ; no one had
yet seen orders, and even the subalterns in each
troop could guess at nothing, when about one
o'clock came the news : the regiment saddled,
mounted, and began to take an abominable country
road northward out of the valley. For all that
afternoon it dragged, a long line of men and
beasts, over the mud of Champagne, through
little plantations of stunted trees, and then again

THE GIRONDIN. 323

across the bare rolling fields, mile after mile after
mile, under the steady fall of the rain.

It was again almost dark, the third day of
such an inconvenience, when a tiny hamlet at
the edge of a wood appeared before the head
of the column, the lights already showing in the
windows. A peasant boy was standing out in
the downpour huddled under a great blanket,
and herding half a hundred sheep. As one of
the sergeants who had been sent out to interro-
gate him approached him, he pounded off in
terror : he was caught in a moment, shaken,
and dragged back. At first he would not speak ;
he did not know whether he was dealing with
the enemy or with what monstrous forces ; but
all they wanted of him was the name of the
place. It was Cense.

The news reassured the command : the men
were glad to perceive in so small a place such
great barns for the reception of them and their
beasts ; and the next day, still under that same
weather, leaving behind them twenty men, of
whom ten would not see their homes again, the
column went forward.

Hamard the lieutenant, riding by Boutroux,
said to him suddenly in the middle of that
morning, in a gentle ironical voice, —

324 THE GIRONDIN.

"Sergeant Perrin, have you studied the art
of war?"

" No, sir," said Boutroux.

The lieutenant sighed. "I am sorry for that.
Had you studied it in your youth, when, as you
tell me, you attended the best classes, you might
have told me what we are at, and why we are
all alone like this upon filthy country lanes.
Short of your information I should have to ask
the colonel, and he would put me under arrest,
and, when we reached a town, in prison."

" Undoubtedly, sir," said Boutroux with respect.

" Well, but, Sergeant Perrin, since you are an
instructed man, pray tell me what all this is."

" I think, sir," said Boutroux grimly, " that
we must be a rearguard. I understand that
such detachments suffer as we are suffering."

" It is very probable," answered the lieutenant
solemnly, and without smiling. " It is a valuable
suggestion. If the men need heartening, supposing
it still rains to-morrow, I shall let the troop know
that we are a rearguard."

The guess was right enough ; that afternoon,
as the regiment trailed wearily into Fresne, they
found all^he evidences of a recent passage by
a great force. One man showed them the house
where Kellermann had slept the night before ;

THE GIRONDIN. 325

several complained of the sick left behind and
quartered upon them. The floor of the town
hall was littered with the wastage of such an
army upon such a march ; there were dead and
dying, lost and broken articles of accoutrement,
and a pile of saddles — the saddles of horses which
had fallen out and could not be replaced.

The next day the clouds lowered but shed
no rain ; the march over the crest to the valley
of the Yevre beyond was just more tolerable
than the whole past week had been. There was
a rising talk in the ranks, and now and then the
beginning of a song, and the French laughter
could be heard. Even the poor beasts felt the
change, and the knowledge of being in touch
with the army seemed to put some energy into
their going.

At Dommartin, the first town since Vitry,
the regiment reposed, entering the place fairly
early in the day, and under orders, or the rumours
of orders, to rest there for many hours of the
next.

And there it was that Boutroux for the first
time saw that his mount Pascal, who had carried
him so faithfully through such weathers, all these
leagues from the centre and from Poitiers, was
in a different mood. Pascal, that elderly beast,

326 THE GIRONDIN.

long ago broken to the necessities of this world,
and accustomed in the stable to let his head
hang as though in perpetual contemplation of
some fate beneath the world, upon this day at
Dommartin stood more pathetically and less
stolidly despairing ; it had fear in its old eyes,
and Boutroux asked the veterinary's orderly to
come and see.

The veterinary's orderly came and saw, and
said that the horse was fitter to be with God
than with men. He squeezed and touched this
place and that as his art taught him, the old
mount turning round and giving him reproachful
looks, and now and then trying to whisk its tail.
The veterinary's orderly shook his head.

" Can you get another mount ? " he asked.

"Only by dismounting a man," said Boutroux.
" We have done enough of that already."

"Then," said the veterinary's orderly, "ride
him till he drops." And with that he went
out.

But Boutroux, coming near to his horse and
looking at him fondly in the face, said, —

" Horse Pascal, you and I have seen much
weather together, and 1 will call you my constant
friend. I have known you for now five weeks,
and no other friend I can recall who has been

THE GIRONDIN. 327

my friend so long, or has remained tolerable
at the end of such a space of time. Nor has
any friend whom I can recall, and whom I could
have wished to stay with me, stayed half so long.
I will go and get you something pleasant."

He swaggered round the barn, picking his
way in among the legs of the men who were
sleeping off their moment of freedom in that
afternoon ; for no man knew what the night
might be. He found upon a shelf at one end
of the barn a pile of carrots ; he stole three of
the largest and came back to the horse.

"Now eat," he said, and the horse bit at the
carrots greedily. " Eat, horse, eat : a soldier's
life has few pleasures ; it is glorious no doubt,
but it is weak in pleasures. Eat ! A soldier's
life is sometimes wet, but now you are in the
dry. Eat, my good Pascal ; God knows what
will come to-morrow."

And even as he said it there were noises in
the street without — women's voices shrill and
exasperated or in panic, men moving quickly,
and immediately afterwards the double sound
of the trumpets calling for the heads of troops
to come to the colonel.

Boutroux went out : it was the fall of the
day ; not yet so dark but that a man could read.

328 THE GIRONDIN.

The street was full of folk, each giving his
version of what had happened ; and from one
end of it, the northern end, which leads out
towards Auve and the Paris road, numbers came
in to swell the crowd.

The enemy had been seen upon the height
above Herpont, said one. No, said another,
beyond the great road. A third, who said he
had seen them himself, and was a liar, swore
that the main forces had occupied the line of
the great road. A fourth, who was cautious and
an atheist by trade, said that these panics came
regularly every three days, and that for his part
he did not believe a word of it. One of the older
sergeant-majors was looking up the street as
though expecting something. Boutroux went up
to him and asked what the true news was. The
old fellow shrugged his shoulders.

"Their cavalry has sent a few scouts forward,
that's all."

" How far ? " asked Boutroux.

" No one seems to know," said the old chap.

The captain of the third troop, a man of the
recent promotions, rough and full of movement,
came up upon his horse, swearing indiscriminately.
He called out as he passed that the order was
Boot-and-Saddle, and that whoever started first

THE GIRONDIN. 329

would have the advantage, for there would be
damned little time after the trumpets.

Boutroux ran back to his own people in the
barn, wakening them, and just as he had done
so the Boot-and-Saddle sounded in the streets
of the little town. But after it, and on the heels
of it, came special orders for haste ; and as the
evening lowered the intolerable business began
again. They were up again, all but the half
dozen or so who had broken down at the end
of this last halt ; some few, lacking mounts from
the collapse of their horses, were left with orders
to follow on foot along the Voilement road.
And as the night fell the regiment was off,
still trailing northward down the valley of the
Yevre.

Why northward or whither, no one but the

command could tell, save that every mile of

the way showed more clearly where the great

army had just passed, and they knew that they

were on the heels of Kellermann. How long

they must march, whether, as most of them

imagined, through the whole night, where they

would come out from their journey, at what place

the junction would be effected, what the chances

of action might be — no one knew. But just when

the darkness was complete, by nine o'clock or so,

11a

330 THE GIRONDIN.

one man and then another felt the coming of a
dreadful and familiar thing : it was the rain !

They had had but a day's respite, and it would
not leave them now. They bent their shoulders
beneath it, and the poor horses their heads, and
all night long it fell, cold and continuous, with
no wind driving it ; and all night long the column
went forward. The going was worse and worse,
the mud splashing from the clay lanes thicker and
more foul.

It seemed in the small hours to more than
one of the men as though something would snap
and go, as though such a strain could not be
continued. Boutroux, like many another, slum-
bered in the saddle, jolting on half conscious ;
the saddle bags and his stirrups (secretly shortened,
against all the traditions of the cavalry) held him
in his place. ,

As he so jolted he thought himself for some
moments a postilion before a chaise, upon a dark
night in a lonely lane upon an upland ; he felt
the rain upon his face. Then he would waken
suddenly as the old horse stumbled, or as some
neighbour in the darkness banged up against him.
Then he would jolt to sleep again, and dream
that he was in a cart driving off from the first
of his adventures ; and then again he would half

THE GIRONDIN. 331

remember in his drowsy head that he was a
soldier and that this was the Army, and he would
wonder how long it might be before they would
reach Poitiers or Bourges, or Orleans or Troyes.
The weeks of marching were fuddled together
in his head as sleep oppressed it. Once and
only once he did completely lose all sense of
motion in the depth of sleep, and then for five
good minutes he dreamt that he smelt the smell
of dried ferns, and that he was well sheltered
in a hiding-place, and that no trouble weighed
on him, because a friend of his would soon come
in and find him there. Of her voice, which in
that moment of dream he clearly remembered,
his mind was still full when he half awoke with
a start that saved his balance. He settled him-
self into the saddle again, and the remaining
hours of the darkness he still imperfectly, heavily,
and drowsily dreamed.

CHAPTER XXL

Valmy.

f I ""HE day dawned after that night of pitiless
rain and mud; the drowned and miserable
light, the half-light of the hopeless morning,
showed nothing but bare fields in which small
stunted trees shivered under the steady drizzle.
The column was checked somewhere ahead, the
old white horse halted abruptly ; Boutroux, lolling
in his saddle, was jolted out of his sleep. He
straightened himself and was awake.

"The longer I live," he muttered to his
wretched mount, "the more I learn! Get up,
my poor beast. A man can sleep in the saddle
fasting and under a shower-bath. It would astonish
them at home ! "

As the word crossed his lips he had a sharp
vision within him — too sharp, the illusion of
fasting and fatigue. He saw the Gironde under
the sunlight,- the quay, the old and noble houses;

THE GIRONDIN. 333

his room and his books returned to him — it was
sleep returning. But the old horse stumbled, and
the picture disappeared. He had a friend and a
reality to hand. Here was a horse who got on
with him well enough. . . . But what a crock !

With that reflection he patted his unfortunate
beast upon its sodden, steaming neck. But the
poor victim was beyond comfort, and put one hoof
before the other mechanically and with weight of
despair.

Boutroux looked round him under the dawn
and saw a miserable sight :

Two miles and more of men stretched strag-
gling along the road before him. In his own troop
there was no semblance of order. The men at his
side and those immediately before him were more
or less his companions, yet not all of the same
troop. Mixed up with them in a hopeless con-
fusion limped a few boys, their uniforms torn, one
of them with a boot cracked to the sole, another
with his face tied up in a chance rag which some
kindly woman had lent him in a farm. He had
the toothache and his cheek was swollen.

Others of the line were jumbled with the
hussars ; two gunners also, come from God knows
where, their dark clothes plastered with mud as
though they had rolled in it, their head-gear too

334 THE GIRONDIN.

large for them, squashed down over their ears and
foreheads.

Far ahead a confusion of carts struggled on
through the weather, and in the marshy fields to
the right a ludicrous attempt at a flanking party, a
dozen horses or so, splashed and sucked as best
they could through the drowned clay. Very far off
forward came from time to time a loud, cursing
order ; and in one place near by Boutroux could see
a man collapsed upon the roadside, and a sergeant
striking him with the butt end of a musket to
make him move. But the man would not move,
for he was dead. And even as Boutroux saw such
a sight, after all that night and all that fatigue, he
smiled, for in the sight there was something
political; the sergeant was an aged man, and his
regiment was a regiment with traditions, a regiment
that was proud to call itself Artois. The white
facings of it were dingy enough now. The ser-
geant of Artois abandoned his task, and Boutroux
turned away his eyes. He was not used to the
death of men.

So the dawn rose through and beyond the steady
rain upon that large and hopeless force, making its
last few miles and nearing, as it thought, its end.

As the light broadened a deep mist enveloped
them all around. It was a mist through which

THE GIRONDIN. 335

the fine, almost imperceptible rain settled into
the already sodden clothes. It mercifully shut
out from those discouraged and broken men all
sights save their immediate duty. They passed
through the streets of a village, the long weary
line of them, and more than one of the line took
advantage of the fog and of a break in the hustle
to hide himself in a side lane in the hope of
escaping what was to come. They approached a
narrow tumble-down bridge at the head of which,
by dint of violence, some sort of order was ar-
ranged. The men on foot were thrust back, the
cavalry sent forward first, and among the first
hundreds Boutroux's troop of hussars, mounted
anyhow and wishing they were dead. Even in
that fatigue and as he passed it, Boutroux, to whom
the things of the eyes were very precious, noticed
that the little stream ran milk-white, and he
thought it curious.

"Everything," he said to himself, "in this
accursed North country is strange 1 "

A quarter of an hour after, at the head of the
rising lane, as the hussars struggled forward, fet-
lock deep in mud, there loomed through the fog a
line of high trees, and it was some slight comfort,
after such a march, for the cavalry to find them-
selves on the great highroad. They were filed off

336 THE GIRONDIN.

by the left along it, and it was passed along from one
man to another that the main camp was close by.

Seven strokes sounded from the cracked old bell
of the village below : the sound came harsh and
tinny yet muffled through the mist, and when the
last stroke sounded the whole mysterious and
obscure surroundings were shrouded again in misty
silence save for the shuffling of damp feet upon
damper earth as the line crawled and tumbled up
pell-mell from the brook below on to the height
of the road.

Suddenly all their minds and all the imagined
landscape beyond the fog was transformed for them
by a sound which very few of those huddled thou-
sands had ever heard. It was the sound which, all
who^v£dJW€Fe-toJiearJbr twenty years_^the unan-
nounced, unbugled boom oTguns. Far up to the left
along the great highway — upon a height it seemed,
from the noise — they were firing. It came and it
came again — a. mile away perhaps — perhaps more.

Thud ! ... it was the earth that carried the
sound. Half a minute's silence, then again —
Thud ! . . . One could have sworn the dripping
leaves upon the high, road-side trees had trembled.
The less weary and the younger of the long line
of horses stirred at the sound and sniffed the
air. . . . Thud ! . . . It came again.

THE GIRONDIN. 337

What guns and whose had thus opened the
game none but the staff could tell — but they were
firing, and there was action. For some few
moments an alertness and almost a gaiety came
into the eyes of these young men, broken with
fatigue though they were and with the ceaseless
marching of the night.

Boutroux's old horse lifted its head with a faint
gesture that years ago might have betrayed a recog-
nition of that sound ; but that head drooped again,
and the beast stood as weary as ever in the long
line of the cavalry drawn up beside the road . . .

A fainter, less certain, a more distant noise
began to answer : the enemy had opened his reply.
Thud ! Thud ! . . . the nearer pieces were firing
faster and faster, the further batteries opposed
followed pace for pace ; for an hour it grew from
a measured beat to a broken roar, at last a furious
cannonade.

But all that business and momentous sound was
veiled ; and those cannon seemed to be part of
ghostly and unseen things.

No shadow of a man approached down the road
through the grey murk ; only now and then a
slight breath of wind, rising as though lifted by the
anger of the far artillery, blew a clear space before
the eyes of the cavalry. In such a moment could

338 THE GIRONDIN.

be seen half a mile of the long road : the infantry
in their ranks waiting ; the wagons drawn up by
the kerb ; a chance group of officers with maps,
watching and straining towards the sound of the
firing. Then the lane, so opened for a moment, as
quickly closed again with new rolls of cloud, and
swallowed up in it the countryside : bare rolling
land ; miserable wet stubble ; the white bare
patches of the famine-fields, where not even rye
could grow. All the while the rumble and the
thunder continued.

A brigade of cavalry passed before them, and
the hussars, dismounted, watched them go by with
envy. They could understand no more of the
welter than their fellows left behind, but at least
they were going to act, and this mere halting in
the rain was one more weight of despair to their
less fortunate fellows.

The clatter of their shoes died away in the fog :
the cannonade had dropped to a fitful exchange of
shots, which at last came only from the further and
more distant guns. The young men were talking
to each other aimlessly ; certain of the infantry, at
the end of the long straggling roadside line, were
too free. They had sauntered up and were speak-
ing with their dismounted comrades of the hussars,
when, as sudden and as unexpected as that first

THE GIRONDIN. 339

cannonade, but twenty times more violent, crashing
like the fall of some titanic plate of metal, or the
clapping to of some vast door, rang another nearer
and intolerable firing. It ceased abruptly: two
minutes later a novel sound came through the
fog ; it was like the noise of flood waters, or of a
hurricane in trees at night ; it was the approach of
broken men.

First a few, flying in a complete disorder, pierced
through out of the fog, stopped, and tried to form
again as they came upon the infantry and the cavalry
lining the road. Then, as more and yet more
poured upon them in the panic, they broke yet
again.

So scattered, so pouring by, rallied here and
there in confused groups by desperate superiors, x
whirling in eddies, streaming away in curses and
blows and adjurations, half a brigade and more of
the stampede fled down the great highway and
were swallowed up in the mist again.

The hussars had barely time to note them —
one officer was heard saying to another that the
wreckage was from Dumouriez's lot — when yet
another body came retreating down the great
road, in somewhat better plight but heavily
mauled.

It was followed by a maimed and jumbled pack

3+0 THE GIRONDIN.

of wagons, with limbers here and there, and here
and there the carriage of a broken gun. The
horses of the teams had blood upon their flanks,
and more than one limber was dragged by a team
from which a leader or a wheeler had been cut
away, so that the end of the trace hung knotted
and severed. Confused and scrambling, that
deafening jostle and jolt of wheels went past in
its turn : following it, the last of the broken
position, and a covering for its flying defenders,
walked past with more dignity and in far better
order a mounted force. These also passed, and
were lost in the mist beyond. The noise of the
flight grew less, and ceased altogether. There came
up the now empty road two orderlies galloping
hard : the officers in command of the waiting
roadside line received them. In a quarter of an
hour the infantry and the hussars had formed into
column and were off eastward again upon their
endless business of unexplained advance and
fatigue.

The young men had heard cannon, and had
seen the beginning of war : they were bewildered,
and for the most part they remembered best, of
that confused morning hour with its cries of panic
and flood of fugitives rolling before them, the
coffee hot and ample. There had been coffee and

THE GIRONDIN. 341

bread by the gallon. They all remembered it for
many days.

Within a mile they saw through the rising mist,
dimly, the spire and the houses of another village
upon the great highroad ; behind it a whole field
of tents where the main force of Kellermann had
waited through that sodden night. But the tents
were striking even as they approached, and a vast
mass of equipage and train was moving off on to
the empty uplands above, while the heads of the
columns were being wheeled each in turn off the
great road towards the fields above ; the hussars
with the rest. The horses dragged as best they
could through the morass of those ploughlands,
men riding in front picked out the hardest going,
and every few moments the whole winding trail of
them would halt as the head of it was checked at a
soft patch.

The mist shredded and grew thinner ; the wind
had risen. The far field line along the sky was
plainer, and the soldiers began to tell one another
that they were nearing a main position. Far off
in the mist, behind them at first, but on their left
as the long line of men wheeled northward,
sounded fitfully and unseen and muffled the
distant guns of the invaders.

The head of the hussars had reached a crest,

342 THE GIRONDIN.

the infantry had already occupied its further side,
when there came down the irregular mass shouted
orders that struck and halted the joints of the
column : the two miles of men were to stand.

It was ten o'clock when the halt came. Till
noon there was no further movement. The
hussars had dismounted again ; the fog rose
lighter and lighter yet ; the wind strengthened and
scattered it over great patches of dull landscape ;
here and there a mass of distant men, the enemy,
appeared westward from the height on which the
cavalry stood.

Boutroux and his troop were holding their
mounts to the leeward of a great windmill which
stood up, sheltering them somewhat from the
weather ; into the depth of that weather the ill-
formed thousands of the army extended, all at
haphazard. Beside the mill and along the crest
before it were drawn up the foot in every
form. Boutroux, from behind his shelter of the
mill, saw with a complete indifference battery after
battery, six batteries in all, get slowly through the
press, and have a way made for them to positions
on the ridge of the hill.

All behind the mill and on either side was a
confusion of men, chiefly of the mounted forces,
scattered pell-mell. On the same sheltered side

THE GIRONDIN. 343

of the hill lay little packs of men who had fallen
out, and the few wounded, and there were groups
of sappers as well. Here and there a bunch of
the Grenadiers in their tall bearskins ; the mass of
cavalry waiting dismounted, and the whole of this
reserve without due form or order.

It was noon, and there was nothing forward.
Boutroux considered within himself how strange
a thing was active service, and how incompre-
hensible a thing a battle — if indeed this was battle,
and battle it surely was, to judge by the perpetual
distant cannonade. He guessed vaguely what
might be the plan ; abandoned the muddled riddle,
and did not even ask his old white horse for aid
in such a problem. He crouched there in the lee
of the mill, watching the haggard and empty faces
of the idle groups about him, wondering what
might be doing on the edge of the crest beyond
his shelter, watching a barrel of wine slowly
dragged up upon two wheels by a donkey, which
a most hideous canteen woman of the 98 th was
leading with difficulty, and blows, through the
mud.

All the while the distant guns kept up their
ceaseless and repeated booming, and now and then
a shell fell wide over the heads of them all, to
drop in the further valley and be lost in the mist

344 THE GIRONDIN.

of it, and now and then a luckier aim dropped
a solid shot not far from the mill walls, so that
the ground shook with it. Sometimes, much
more rarely, some stroke of even better fortune
for the enemy, or of better aim at a moment when
the wind was steady, would make a dance near by :
a clatter of breakage and a slamming blow, followed
by a scuffle and cries.

But still — there was very little doing. Boutroux
munched his bread, and gazed on the reserves
before him. He saw only a lot of most un-
fortunate men, drenched as though they had
swum through a pond ; a great welter of horses
also, of wagons, and here and there of provision-
ment ; the smoke of a fire where some one had
lit it for the warming of his coffee in spite of the
weather, and the occasional whistle and thud of
projectiles falling near at hand, set to the irregular,
distant, and sullen boom of the enemy's guns.

Then, as noon turned, the guns of his own forces
took it up — they were not a hundred yards behind
him ; they shook the air, and the ground, and all
his bones. He thought the noise intolerable — it
was just beyond the mill, blasting him to pieces
every quarter of a minute, and drowning all his
senses. But he had to bear it, had Boutroux —
and as for the old white horse, he cared as little

THE GIRONDIN. 345

for the nearer as he had cared for the further
noise.

The wind was rising, the mist had turned into
low clouds that scurried before it. There was
now neither mist nor drizzle, though the air was
very cold ; the intervals of open sky grew larger
and more frequent, and sunlight — for the first
time in all those dreadful days — broke upon the
tarnished colours of the force. A man strolled
up to Boutroux and told him it was worth seeing.

" Worth seeing — what ? " said Boutroux.

" They're beginning to advance," he said. He
told Boutroux that from a place a little way back,
where there was a gap, one could see everything.
But Boutroux didn't want to see : he would stick
it out where he was with his horse, in the lee of
the mill. The whole thing was quite beyond him.

All the while that damaging and rocking noise
of the French guns tormented and bewildered the
air. He heard loud shouts of command — the
staggering line beyond the mill was suffering some
sort of order ; it was massing into three columns.
He could see linesmen called up from scattered
groups and hurriedly shifting their packs on to
their shoulders. He could see men running up to
take their places in the tail of companies. Then,
during a pause in that incessant firing, he heard a

346 THE GIRONDIN.

great volley of cheers, and the confused political
cries, enthusiastic and young, which reminded him
of the street rows at home.

His curiosity got the better of him. He hooked
his bridle to the mill door staple, peeped round
the corner of the brickwork — and saw nothing. . . .
At least only those three great masses of men, all
solemnly drawn up together.

They hid from Boutroux the guns that were
massed in front, on the edge of the hill, but he
did see for one moment Kellermann and his staff
mounted and showing high above the line. And
as the general rode down the front, just before the
sight of him was lost in the press beyond, Boutroux
saw him leading and answering the cheers, the
three-coloured plume of his hat waved on the
point of his sword.

Having so seen, Boutroux went back to his
shelter and tried to bear the noise. He was about
to soften its terrors by further gentle conversation
with his mount, when a crash so very much more
abominable than all he had yet heard drove from
him the memory of name and place and time.
The whole fabric of the mill shivered, the air was
a moment stunned and dead . . . the dreadful
pause of a second, no more, was followed by a
dense cloud of black and pungent smoke blowing

THE GIRONDIN. 347

before the high wind past either side of the
building, and in the same moment came up that
terrible unnumbered cry of many wounded men,
shrieking and rising pointed upon a background
of yet more terrible moans. He heard articulate
appeals for death, and next, immediately, he saw
great lumps of the linesmen crouching, turning,
hiding, in every attitude ; a moment later and a
whole brigade was flying past him, with officers
and sergeants cursing in German, striking and
wounding and turning the cattle back with
the sword — it was the German mercenaries
maddened by the explosion of the limbers, and
roaring for safety from such hells. Boutroux
was like a man moored to the pier of a bridge
during the swell of a flood ; he was protected
from that flood of war by the brickwork of the
mill, but he was enclosed with swirls of panic on
every side.

It was soon over. They got the paid men
under control as one gets a fire under control.
The mass was beaten and salved into shape : it
shuffled back into some sort of order again, and
one troop after another of cavalry were got together
and sent forward. The hussars were still left
alone, and empty of business in the shelter of the
hill. No orders came for them. A fatigue came

348 THE GIRONDIN.

up (on the crest beyond, the guns still hammered
and banged) ; it came staggering under a great
measure of oats. It was high time, and Boutroux
very contentedly filled his poor beast's nose-bag,
and tied it on. At first the old white horse
would not eat, but Boutroux coaxed :

" I have no wine for you," he said ; " but if you
will eat, like a good beast, I will steal water for
you from the gunners."

The guns went on with their dance more furi-
ously than ever. Now and then an isolated cheer
broke out, recalling to Boutroux that first storm of
cheers when Kellermann had rallied the line two
hours before. Now and then the sharp break of a
shell, the noise and cries of it, or the ground far
before him caught by a chance shot, startled him.
The guns went on. Boutroux was almost grown
part of the deafening on the other side of his mill ;
he had almost forgotten what a day was like in
which there were no guns . . . yet these were the first
guns he had ever known. The thing comes quickly.

Hour after hour throughout the afternoon that
noise occupied the sky, until at last, at about five
(at any rate his stomach, though shaken by the fire,
told him it was the time for soup), the slow
dropping of the cannonade became more and more
marked to the listener.

THE GIRONDIN. 349

As the fitful and rarer shots succeeded one
another, the mist, now wholly blown away, the
open sky which had followed it, were in turn
succeeded, perhaps as a sequence to so terrible
a duel, by a black ceiling of storm ; the last venge-
ance of that fortnight's weather poured angrily
upon the thousands massed and huddled round the
mill, passed, and it was clear again. No further
battery fired, save, very far off to the northward,
one stray shot and then another. The cannonade
was done.

Then, for perhaps half an hour, a curious silence
fell. Boutroux, behind the mill, could not but
notice it. It was so silent that the creaking of
the mill sails on their pivot .in the slight but
persistent wind occupied his imagination. It was
so silent that the whispered conversation of men as
awed as himself sounded loud, as it would sound
in a room. The scud went slowly and noiselessly
on eastward across the heaven, and so low it seemed
like a reef above them. One shot broke the
silence at last solemnly. The smoke of it rose
from the Mont Yvron, a mile away. It was
fired as a signal is fired. There was no reply.

For yet another half-hour this strange silence
endured. It was suddenly broken by the sharp
clangour of bronze ; a bugler too aged for a

3 so THE GIRONDIN.

soldier, some unlettered peasant of the old time
broken in many wars, was sounding the assembly
not a hundred yards away from the mill. By
his side a little drummer with the facings of a royal
regiment, very strict and (for such an army 1) al-
most tidy, recalled the traditions of the King and
of less fatiguing days.

The men came flocking up from every side as
to a town crier, for they saw with these two a third
who, from a horse, had an order to read. Boutroux
stood where he was, too careless to move, yet
interested in that sight.

" Horse," said he wisely, " this is a battle. Do
not forget it. Things are not in manhood what
boyhood imagines them ! . . . This has been a battle.
We shall have to boast of it by and by."

The loud high voice of the man who read the
order sounded clear, though too far to be followed
through the rain-washed air ; mounted as he was,
he showed against the declining light of that soaked
September evening in a manner prophetic and
wonderful enough. But Boutroux thought to
himself: " It will be time enough to learn the
news in a moment when he shall have done." He
had not long to wait. The reading was soon over,
the little drummer drummed a smart and lengthy
roll, the bugle sang out again, and the three of

THE GIRONDIN. 351

them went on to another group. The crowd
of torn uniforms and broken faces which had
gathered to hear the order dispersed, each man to
his food and to his place. Those who had been
next Boutroux under the mill sauntered back again.

" You have missed something, Sergeant," said
one.

" What is that ? " said Boutroux.

" It has been a great victory . . . and there's a
Republic," said the other.

"What is a Republic ?" asked Boutroux.

" I don't know," said the soldier, " but it sounds
bloody good ! "

So he said, and he swore that he would go and
drink to the Republic ; and as he so swore he
shambled off to where the canteen woman dis-
pensed at an immoderate price small cups of wine
from her travelling barrel on wheels.

As for Boutroux, sitting on the wet ground with
his back leaning upon the foundation of the mill,
he looked up at his horse and murmured, —

"Dear friend, do you hear that? . . . But I
forgot : you never answer me. Well, then, I will
tell you of my own accord. We have won a great
victory . . . and there's a Republic."

For the first time in so many days the old horse,
full of oats, at last neighed. He wanted water.

3 52 THE GIRONDIN.

Boutroux slowly lifted himself from his crampe
position, not without a twinge in the joints afte
such weather. He lounged up to a gun near b
and collared the pail.

"Orders not to lend that pail," grumbled th
man left with the gun.

" Sorry," said Boutroux. He walked off wit
it, and begged the old white horse to drink th
dirty stuff. "It tastes of powder, I know," h
said, " but so does all this cursed trade." The oli
horse drank at last.

Boutroux pushed open the mill door, helpe<
himself to a nice wisp of straw, and very slowl;
and methodically began to groom his beast, tellinj
it as he did so all manner of entertaining things.

CHAPTER XXIL

Which shows the Disagreeables attendant upon
the Use of zAmateur Drivers in the Conduct
of Artillery ; especially when they are
pressed for Time.

' I ""HE September dark had fallen ; through the
thick air the stronger stars could just be
palely seen. Away along the Prussian lines a few
smoky fires began to burn, notably in front of a
small inn which lay upon the great Paris road, with-
in which inn the King of Prussia, and Brunswick,
and the princes of the French blood — and, for that
matter, near by, young Goethe the poet — were
assembled. But what did the Army know of such
things ?

Those who still cared to look over what had
been the field of that day's cannonade saw nothing
save the vague line which a roll of land makes
darker against the dark sky of a cloudy evening,

and here and there those smoky blotches of dull

12

354 THE GIRONDIN.

red light coming and going with the drift of the
murk, and marking the line of the allies. A young
soldier — a volunteer caught in during the march —
came up with a lantern in his hand and peered into
the door of the mill ; his face was full of joy, for
he was still three-quarters civilian, and he had
education, and the literary side of the thing appealed
to him. He said, —

"A great day, Sergeant."

To which Boutroux replied, with as little brutality
as he could manage, —

" I don't suppose that was your message."

"No, Sergeant," said the lad, "but 1 couldn't
help saying it ; " and he sighed contentedly.

Boutroux continued to rub down the old horse
with a wisp of straw, and as he did so he noted
painfully that the beast shivered.

" Sergeant," said the lad, " I've come with
orders."

" Well, what are they ? " said Boutroux, grooming
away, and not looking round.

" We sleep on the ground^ Sergeant."

"Naturally," said Boutroux ; "and I hope you
will not find it too damp. I sleep in the mill.
Dismiss."

" Sergeant, they're calling all the sergeants round
in the regiment."

THE GIRONDIN. 25 S

a You should have said that at first, you hoofed
and horned fool ! " answered Boutroux, with the
politeness of the service. "I'll be back soon,"
he said to his horse as he shut the mill door behind
him, and followed the boy to where a number of
the non-commissioned rank were running up to
receive the regimental orders. The subalterns
were there, each delivering the message for his troop ;
and in the darkness, on a mount that still held
itself well after all these days, Boutroux saw
the figure of his colonel ; and as he saw it he
remembered vividly those hot hours in the south,
and the young officer meeting the Commissioner
to the Armies, the sudden promotion, and all the
bewildering jumble of the eastward march under this
man's growing command. The order was read to
them by the light of a lantern ; they were told
that the operations had been completely successful;
the cannonade was made to seem to those young
men and old, huddled together, a national and
a determining victory. They were told that the
invaders were routed.

Meanwhile, a mile away, the invaders lay in
occupation of the crest that they had held all
day long, and the issue, as men knew better in
proportion to their rank, was only a little less
doubtful than the day before : a little less doubtful

356 THE GIRONDIN.

in this, that the great unformed mass of the French
levies had just barely stood; they had not been
driven and broken into the forest of the hills.

But the soldiers were content to accept the new
legend, and for the first time in all those days
gaiety ran through the regiment. Even the pros-
pect of a night upon that drenched soil did not
disturb them, and Kellermann had wisely seen to it
that wine should come up from the village : men
were filled with wine before they slept. In the line
the companies, in the cavalry the troops, clubbed
for the purchase of the liquor ; the canteen made
its enormous profits, and for the first time since
the beginning of the wars the peasants were doing
business too.

To one of these, bringing his barrels in upon an
open cart, Boutroux went up and spoke.

" Friend," said he, " will you not sell me some
of your wine ? "

The man shook his head. He was under orders
to sell to no one but to the canteen. "Written
orders," he said, "and signed by the colonel upon
the paper of the Republic." He spoke that last
word with so much dignity that Boutroux looked
at him curiously.

" I have heard already that the Republic is crawl-
ing on ; but if only you would give me some

THE GIRONDIN. 357

wine, since you are not allowed to sell it, we might
discuss the matter."

" I have no wish to discuss it," said the peasant,
"and I certainly will not give you wine. We
have been a Republic these twenty-four hours."

" See how stingy Republics are ! " said Boutroux.
" Why, in the old days such as yesterday and the
day before, when there was no Republic, men could
have wine for the asking, and sometimes for the
taking. It has not mended things, your Republic ;
but I will go and tell the news to my horse. 1 do
not need your wine. Only tell me something I
do not quite understand. What is the name of
this place ? "

"This place ?" said the man clumsily ; "it has
no name."

"1 thought as much," said Boutroux, "by the
look of it during the daylight. But 1 suppose you
live somewhere : there is some sort of a village
with pigs in it and more mud ? "

"Down below," said the man, jerking his.
thumb, "is my village."

"What do you call it ? " said Boutroux.

" Valmy," said the man.

"I must remember that name," said Boutroux.
" When one gets out of active service it is a great
thing to remember the names of battles. I can

358 THE GIRONDIN.

see myself sitting in an inn with a great scar upon
my face (got from a cart-whip) ; the yokels shall
stand me drinks while I tell them the dreadful
things I did round and about the mill at Valmy,
and what wounds I had, and how bewildered a
man is and yet how exalted under fire."

With this he sauntered off; the main force drew
off through the darkness, but the hussars held on ;
and all night long until the bugles under the dull
and misty dawn he slept by his horse in the mill,
and with the morning they assembled for the
march again.

The line was formed, the regiment was in
column and began picking its way through such
huddled groups of the soldiery as were left on the
height, past broken limbers, here and there the
body of a man, cases of food and of powder, scraps
of the bread brought up at the end of the day
before- — all the litter of position which has been
held by many thousands.

" I thought as much," murmured Boutroux to
himself, as the column very gradually wound its
way out of the confusion of men and things and
headed eastward down the great empty rolls of
chalky land, " I thought as' much. They never
say it in the history books, but it is what I always
imagined to be true. After a great victory one

THE GIRONDIN. 359

heads away from the enemy. But we must not
make too sure, my dear," he continued to the old
horse, patting its neck ; " we may be outflanking,
or enveloping, or doing some other monstrous
thing. Or we may be concentrating ; but it does
look uncommonly like a peaceable and well-ordered
retreat so far as the Lambs are concerned."

As for the Lambs, they went forward easily
enough. There was nothing in the attitude of
those spent boys with their sprinkling of veterans,
and their young colonel at the head, to suggest
any emotion of retreat or of victory. They were
still maundering on whithersoever they might be
led, which is the whole trade of soldiers. The
grooming had been very imperfect, the horses were
badly splashed, but after the cannonade the respite
had given ample time for provision, and at least
the poor beasts had been well fed and had drunk
their fill of the white chalky water of the Champagne
Pouilleuse.

A few miles off Argonne stood up, a long low
wall against the eastern sky, dark with its miles
and miles of trees ; and beneath it, at the foot of a
gap, a spire and a confusion of little buildings
marked Ste Menehould.

They went on thus two hours, parallel bodies
beginning to move with the advance of the day ;

360 THE GIRONDIN.

they reached the gates of the market-town, and as
they reached them Boutroux noticed that his mount
was done. Horses, especially the trained horses
of cavalry, will so work up to the last moment,
and then, without excuse or complaint, their end
comes upon them. The old white horse stumbled
twice, and Boutroux checked it, pulling it up and
cheering it as he had done now for so many days.
But the horse did not respond and did not lift its
head. It had not many hundred yards to go.
His horse so failing filled him with a superstition.
He put his hand in his tunic to his chain and his
medal. The medal was gone.

Just as they got within the streets of the town
Boutroux, with the last troop of the long column
of the regiment, heard a clatter and a crashing
of wheels coming down the slope of a side street.
It was the hired local drivers — peasants bringing
in a battery. There was a complete confusion ;
the weight of the pieces and of the limbers on
the steep incline had been just too much for the
wretched teams, and the whole weight of the busi-
ness was pouring down unchecked on to the high-
street. The horses stumbled and slid together,
some had already caught in their traces, one or
two thrown, and the most of them sliding upon
the wet paving.

THE GIRONDIN. 36 r

The troop had barely turned their eyes to notice
the danger, when Boutroux, appreciating it more
rapidly than any other of his equals, shouted, as
men do in accidents, forgetting rank, —

" Lieutenant, wheel them to the right, and bring
up alongside the next file ! "

The lieutenant looked round, startled, began to
see what was happening, and had the sense to obey
the suggestion. He shouted the order, the men
urged their mounts, the whole half-hundred were
pulling away quickly from the shock of the battery
just as its ungoverned impetus came upon the high-
street. Boutroux, rounding up at the end, was
watching his men to see that they should just
escape the peril, when the old white horse could do
no more. The attempt at speed which its rider
had conveyed to it was the point which determined
its end. It stumbled — a pole of the near limbers
was within a foot of its flank. Boutroux, forgetting
friendship and forgetting ties, pulled at the curb
brutally. The poor beast lifted its head and jerked
it in an attempt to rise, failed, and fell.

It fell right upon the sergeant's left leg before

he had time to drag it from the stirrup ; and as it

fell, the pole, the wheels of the limber, and the

teams came in a mass over the fallen horse and

rider. . . .

12 a

362 THE GIRONDIN.

Before Boutroux's eyes was a mad confusion
of plunging horses, men's feet in the stirrup
irons, and the thongs of whips ; Pascal's old head
tossing twice in a convulsive movement. But the
sight was conditioned and controlled by an intoler-
able and increasing pain. This vision of pain,
noise, and wild movement, all mixed and kneaded
together, lasted not a moment. The sergeant was
soon alone with pain, and with pain only. The
air about him grew dark ; he saw, heard, knew,
felt nothing but the pain, nor did anything else
remain with him. The pain extended and became
a part of his being.

Less conscious than a man in a drunken sleep,
he knew that they were moving him, but he knew
it only by newer and sharper experiences of pain :
he was conscious of that so fully that there was
room for nothing else. It was as though the
colour upon which his closed eyes dully gazed,
the dark red colour which was round him somehow
like a cloak, was the very colour of pain. Then,
by God's mercy, this awful form of consciousness
grew dull ; his spirit and his body ached, but only
ached. He had sunk into a sort of use and custom
of dull agony, and soon this also passed, and
without repose and without refreshment he sank
into something deeper than his deepest sleep.

CHAPTER XXIII.

In "Which the Girondin complains of the Weather.

TX7"HEN consciousness returned to Boutroux,
f it returned two-fold : he was clear of him-
self, of his name, of his regiment, he was especially
clear of every tiny detail of light and shade and
colour at the moment before he fell ; and he
was conscious again of pain — of pain now not
only mudding all the rest or overspreading it,
but of the pain as a separate thing. And the pain
had location : it was his thigh and his right
groin.

He groaned and opened his eyes. He was in
a little bed, the last of twenty or thirty that lay
in a line along the wall of a room so lengthy that
it seemed almost a corridor. The opposite wall
which faced the foot of his bed was a line of gaunt
and dirty windows against which the rain still
drove and poured ; the distempered walls were
splashed and grey, cracked in parts and caught

364 THE GIRONDIN.

with dust at the corners. At the far end, to
which his eyes could just turn (for he could move
no part of his body nor lay his head to one side),
a large white mark, showing against the duller
background of the wall, was the place where a
crucifix had hung for many years and had shielded
the surface from the effect of the light. He was
in one of those hospitals which the forces had
hurriedly arranged in the public buildings of
Ste Menehould : it was a convent, dissolved these
two years ; a day or two before it had been the
quarters of some of Dumouriez's men. Their
obscenities and their jests were scribbled on the
walls, and intermixed with them the name of the
regiment which had occupied the building. So
much he gathered and no more. He could hear
on the paved street without the rattle of passing
wheels, and he distinguished the clank of cannon.
. . . The occasional cries of command reached
him also ; but with these familiar sounds, there
were others in that room less familiar and most
distressing to the broken man. From four beds
away came a continual monotonous groaning as
regular as the breathing of sleep, and at the far
end of the room a man in attendance was roughly
quieting or attempting to quiet some boy whom a
wound had driven light-headed, and who broke

THE GIRONDIN. 365

out time and again into shrieking snatches of
marching songs.

As Boutroux so lay, he saw coming up the
room at the foot of the bed a doctor attached to
the armies, a civilian bearing pinned to his sleeve
the badge of his temporary duty. With him was
one of the men told off for this fatigue, one of
the few men that could be spared for such a duty,
himself ill enough, white and miserable, and only
spared to walk the hospital because he would have
been unable to march.

The doctor came up to the bed ; the attendant
recited the case, the name, and the regiment, from
notes he held in his hand. Boutroux, wondering
what they would do with him, lying helpless and
gazing at them without much friendship, saw that
the doctor was a settled bearded man, a surgeon,
perhaps, one of deliberate movements and of fixed
manner. He pulled back the bed-clothes and put
his hand upon the hip of the sergeant, who gave
a loud cry of pain. He pressed his hand, careless
of such an effect, and of other cries that followed
it, upon the groin and upon the thigh ; he passed
it up to the lowest of the ribs ; he found there that
the pain ceased ; with a fixed pressure of the
fingers that maddened his patient — but his patient
could not move — he quickly discovered for himself

366 THE GIRONDIN.

the main part of the business, and, having done
so, he put the bed-clothes back and moved off
again.

Boutroux lay alone, staring at the ceiling and
suffering beyond all measure at having to lie there
unfriended and uncompanioned, with no interest
but perpetual pain. He thought : " If something
had hit me during that battle of theirs — for I
understand it was a battle — they would have put
me on the straw and I should have had some one
of the regiment by me ; there would have been
an open wind upon my face. But here I am in
prison, with a sickly linesman to visit me, perhaps
every three hours, and a townsman doctor to
maul me in silence only to decide whether or no
I am to die."

Hour after hour passed and he lay thus, know-
ing nothing and able to learn nothing. The bed
next him was empty, and he had spoken to the
form in the bed beyond, but he had got no answer,
and that form had lain all these hours unpleasandy
still : the face was turned away from him ; he
could see but the hair of the head above the
clothes. He wondered when some one, any one,
would come to exchange a human word with him.

That longing was no longer bearable, he thought,
when the attendant reappeared in that long room

THE GIRONDIN. 367

of suffering and death, and Boutroux called to
him. He marvelled to find his voice so thin and
bodiless. The man came up and stood over him.
The man's paleness, his unshaven chin, a cough
into which he fell from time to time, showed how
he had been invalided for this service upon the
wounded.

" What is it, Sergeant ? " he said, and gave a
cough again, his thin and narrow chest torn and
racked by it. " What is it, Sergeant ? "

" Am I to eat ? " said Boutroux. He found
as he said it that his voice was not only thin, and
himself, as it were, without will and bloodless, but
that he had to modulate his every tone lest the
vibration of the sound, conveyed to his broken
tissues, should add to his pain.

The man shook his head. " Not till you take
a draught the doctor wrote for you," said he.

" Then give it me," said Boutroux.

"The doctor said that if you were suffering
great pain I was to give you the draught. Are
you suffering great pain ? "

" Yes," whispered Boutroux.

" You are sure ? " said the man. " Mind you,
I was not to give you the draught unless you
were suffering great pain ! "

" Oh, I am suffering enough," he sighed ;

368 THE GIRONDIN.

"give it me. Then afterwards, perhaps, I may
eat."

The man went off; he was gone, as it seemed,
an intolerable time ; he came back with a bottle
of thick syrup and a broken cup.

" The doctor did not tell me how much water
I should mix it with," he said doubtfully, as
though Boutroux could have helped him in such
a dilemma.

" Give it me neat," said the sick man ; " I have
found things do more good that way." And he
drank a measure of the sweet, thick, and dark
stuff — a thing that in health he could not have
done.

The attendant bore off the bottle and the cup,
and Boutroux, as he lay — even before that other
had reached the door at the further end of the
room — felt a change. He still suffered pain : in
a way it was the same pain ; then his mind grew
somewhat freer of it. He suffered it still, but
he did notice it less and less, until, in rapid phases,
each a better phase than the last, his pain occupied
him no more. But something inward began to
see matters extremely clear. He was constrained
to shut his eyes, so much clearer was that inward
sight than the dull walls of the room and the dull
windows of it. The colours of what he saw were

THE GIRONDIN. 369

especially plain : there was a tarred log wall and
fern litter, and his white horse old and absurd,
the horse Pascal. The horse was splashed and
steaming from the weather ; he looked round for
something to groom it with : there was not even
straw. But as he looked, the door of the place
opened and the bright sunlight came dancing in.
It shone upon a face and body that seemed to him
immortal, and the girl's arms, as she smiled and
laughed at him, held a great load of shining straw ;
she cast it at his feet and said she had brought it
because she knew he needed it, and that she would
bring him what he needed, no matter where, and
from no matter what far places, for ever, and for
ever, and for ever. And he, laughing back at her,
said : " Joyeuse ! No one would believe it outside
the regiment, but there is nothing like straw and
plenty of it for the grooming of a beast."

" Good bright straw," she answered, " from the
fields where it ripens in the sun."

He was taking it by a handful to groom his
beast, when, even as he groomed it, he found
himself walking with it, leading it by the bridle, and
he found himself alone. He found himself alone
with it, leading it through a woodland way, and he
talked to it and asked it a question, saying : " Pascal,
have we lost the regiment and the service ? "

370 THE GIRONDIN.

And the horse answered him naturally enough :
;<Yes, Sergeant, we have lost the service, and the
service us. And I am glad of it for evermore ! "

He answered : " You are right. It is the service
that makes this dullness and this pain."

For as he walked beside the old horse in the
woodland way, he felt that the walking hurt him
more and more : in the groin . . . dully, then
more sharply, the pain increasing upon him : the
horse and the woods were part of the pain : every-
thing was a part of it, and everything was growing
grey, and the woodland colours about him were
fading. They faded into greys and dull reds,
through which his eyes, opening slowly, saw again
the walls of the room and the long line of windows
streaming still with rain. At his side and near
his head he distinguished the doctor standing.
The doctor was speaking not to him but to the
attendant.

" The opiate," he said, " has had but little effect
upon him, and that is the sign I feared. Next
time, if he needs it, it will have less." He
shrugged his shoulders and moved off to the
other beds.

Boutroux was broad awake. The light seemed
to be the dull light of a wet evening, but he could
not be sure whether it was his eyes that failed him

THE GIRONDIN. 371

or the light outside that was falling. He called in
his feeble voice, and the attendant came again.

" What is it, Sergeant ? " he asked.

"What is the time ? " said Boutroux in the low
voice of a man hoarse and tired.

" I will go and see," said the man.

"No, no, don't go and see. I want to speak
to a man. ... Sit down gently upon the bed."

The attendant sat down and looked at him
stupidly enough, and not very patiently.

" What did the doctor say ? " whispered Bou-
troux.

The other looked awkward. " He said he
couldn't do much good," he answered at last.

" For how long ? "

" Oh, it might be any time," replied the other
dully.

Over the young sergeant's face there passed for
the first time in those hours an expression of pain
which was not physical.

"What did they do," he said, and he was
whispering with difficulty now, "... to the old
horse ? "

" He was all broken in the leg and side, so they
shot him," said the man.

" And am I not so broken ? " said Boutroux. \sk

The man had nothing to answer : he got up

372 THE GIRONDIN.

to go away. Then he heard, or thought he heard,
an odd thing from Boutroux's bed : the words, —

" I should like to see a priest."

The man turned and stared. The sergeant
might as well have asked for the stars or for fairy
gold. Then he laughed stupidly, as he often did
when he heard wounded men raving, and he
began moving off again : he could just hear the
voice feebler, hoarser, and lower than ever begging
him to halt.

" Is it still raining ? " it said.

" Yes," he answered.

" What weather ! " sank the voice. And after
that it spoke no more.

The attendant waited a moment curiously half-
way down the room ; he called out to the bed :
" Are you suffering pain ? "

But there was no answer.

THE END.

Established 1798

T. NELSON

AND SONS

PRINTERS AND
PUBLISHERS

NELSON'S

NEW NOVELS

Uniform with this Volume and
same Price.

ALREADY PUBLISHED.
Second String. Anthony Hope.

This brilliant social comedy contains all the qualities which have
given Anthony Hope his unique reputation as a historian of modern
life. He introduces us to the society of the little country town of
Meriton, the tradespeople, the loungers in the inn parlour, the
neighbouring farmers and squires, and especially to Harry Belfield,
the mirror of fashion in the county and candidate for its represen-
tation in Parliament. We see also his former school friend, Andy
Hayes, who has returned from lumbering in Canada to make a
living at home. The motif of the tale is the unconscious com-
petition of the two friends, of whom Andy is very willing to play
"second fiddle," did not character and brains force him to the
front. The young squire of Halton is too selfish and capricious to
succeed, and in spite of his loyalty to friendship, Andy finds himself
driven to take his place both in love and in politics. A host of
characters cross the stage, and the scene flits between Meriton and
London. The book is so light in touch, so shrewd in its obser-
vation, so robust and yet so kindly in its humour, that it must be
accorded the highest rank among Anthony Hope's works — which
is to say, the first place among modern social comedies.
Ill

Fortune. J. C. Snaith.

Mr. J. C. Snaith is already known to fame by his historical novels,
his admirable cricketing story, his essay in Meredithan subtlety
"Brooke of Covenden," and his most successful Victorian comedy
" Araminta." In his new novel he breaks ground which has never
before been touched by an English novelist. He follows no less
a leader than Cervantes. His hero, Sir Richard Pendragon, is Sir
John Falstaff grown athletic and courageous, with his imagination
fired by much adventure in for countries and some converse with
the knight of La Mancha. The doings of this monstrous English-
man are narrated by a young and scandalized Spanish squire, full
of all the pedantry of chivalry. Sir Richard is a new type in
literature — the Rabelaisian Paladin, whose foes flee not only from
his sword but from his Gargantuan laughter. In Mr. Snaith's
romance there are many delightful characters — a Spanish lady who
dictates to armies, a French prince of the blood who has forsaken
his birthright for the highroad. But all are dominated by the
immense Sir Richard, who rights wrongs like an unruly Providence,
and then rides away.

The History of Mr. Polly. H. G. Wells.

If the true aim of romance is to find beauty and laughter and
heroism in odd places, then Mr. Wells is a great romantic His
heroes are not knights and adventurers, not even members of the
quasi-romantic professions, but the ordinary small tradesmen, whom
the world has hitherto neglected. The hero of the new book, Mr.
Alfred Polly, is of the same school, but he is nearer Hoopdriver
than Kipps. He is in the last resort the master of his fate, and
squares himself defiantly against the Destinies. Unlike the others,
he has a literary sense, and has a. strange fantastic culture of his
own. Mr. Wells has never written anything more human or more
truly humorous than the adventures of Mr. Polly as haberdasher's
apprentice, haberdasher, incendiary, and tramp. Mr. Polly dis-
covers the great truth that, however black things may be, there is
always a way out for a man if he is bold enough to take it, even
though that way leads through fire and revolution. The last part
of the book, where the hero discovers his courage, is a kind of saga.
We leave him in the end at peace with his own soul, wondering
dimly about the hereafter, having proved his manhood, and found
his niche in life.

IV

Daisy's Aunt. E. F. Benson.

It is Mr. Benson's chief merit that, without losing the lightness of
touch which makes good comedy, he keeps a firm hold upon the
graver matters which make good fiction. The present book is a
tale of conspiracy — the plot of a beautiful woman to save her young
niece from a man whom she regards as a blackguard. None of
Mr. Benson's women are more attractive than these two, who fight
for long at cross-purposes, and end as all honest natures must, with
a truer understanding.

The Other Side. H. A. Vachell.

In this remarkable book Mr. Vachell leaves the beaten highway
of romance, and grapples with the deepest problems of human
personality and the unseen. It is a story of a musical genius, in
whose soul worldliness conquers spirituality. When he is at the
height of his apparent success, there comes an accident, and for
a little soul and body seem to separate. On his return to ordinary
life he sees the world with other eyes, but his clearness of vision
has come too late to save his art. He pays for his earlier folly in
artistic impotence. The book is a profound moral allegory, and
none the less a brilliant romance.

Sir George's Objection. Mrs. W. K. Clifford.

Mrs. Clifford raises the old problem of heredity, and gives it a very
modern and scientific answer. It is the story of a woman who,
after her husband's disgrace and death, settles with her only
daughter upon the shore of one of the Italian lakes. The girl
grows up in ignorance of her family history, but when the inevitable
young man appears complications begin. As it happens, Sir George,
the father of the lover, holds the old-fashioned cast-iron doctrine
of heredity, and the story shows the conflict between his pedantry
and the compulsion of fact. It is a book full of serious interest for
all readers, and gives us in addition a charming love story.

Prester John. John Buchan.

This is a story which, in opposition to all accepted canons of
romance, possesses no kind of heroine. There is no woman from
beginning to end in the book, unless we include a little Kaffir
serving-girl. The hero is a Scottish lad, who goes as assistant to
v

a store in the far north of the Transvaal. By a series of accidents
he discovers a plot for a great Kaffir rising, and by a combination
of luck and courage manages to frustrate it. From beginning to
end it is a book of stark adventure. The leader of the rising is a
black missionary, who believes himself the incarnation of the
mediaeval Abyssinian emperor Prester John. By means of a per-
verted Christianity, and the possession of the ruby collar which for
centuries has been the Kaffir fetish, he organizes the natives of
Southern Africa into a great army. But a revolution depends upon
small things, and by frustrating the leader in these small things, the
young storekeeper wins his way to fame and fortune. It is a book
for all who are young enough in heart to enjoy a record of straight-
forward adventure.

Lost Endeavour. John Masefield.

Mr. Masefield has already won high reputation as poet and
dramatist, and his novel "Captain Margaret" showed him to be
a romancer of a higher order. "Lost Endeavour" is a story of
adventure in Virginia and the Spanish Main. A Kentish boy is
trepanned and carried off to sea, and finds his fill of adventure
among Indians and buccaneers. The central episode of the book
is a quest for the sacred Aztec temple. The swift drama of the
narrative, and the poetry and imagination of the style, make the
book in the highest sense literature. It should appeal not only to
all lovers of good writing, but to all who care for the record of
stirring deeds.

Panther's Cub. Agnes and Egerton Castle.

This is the story of a world -famed prima donna, whose only daughter
has been brought up in a very different world from that in which
her mother lives. When the child grows to womanhood she joins
her mother, and the problem of the book is the conflict of the two
temperaments — the one sophisticated and undisciplined, and the
other simple and sincere. The scenes are laid in Vienna and
London, amid all types of society — smart, artistic, and diplomatic.
Against the Bohemian background the authors have worked out a
very beautiful love story of a young diplomatist and the singer's
daughter. The book is full of brilliant character-sketches and
dramatic moments.

Lady Good-for-Nothing. "Q."

Sir Oliver Vyell, a. descendant of Oliver Cromwell, is the British
Collector of Customs at the port of Boston, in the days before the
American Revolution. While there he runs his head against New
England Puritanism, rescues a poor girl who has been put in the
stocks for Sabbath-breaking, carries her off, and has her educated.
The story deals with the development of Ruth Josselin from a half-
starved castaway to a beautiful and subtle woman. Sir Oliver falls
in love with his ward, and she becomes my Lady and the mistress
of a great house ; but to the New Englanders she remains a Sabbath-
breaker and "Lady Good-for-Nothing." The scene moves to
Lisbon, whither Sir Oliver goes on Government service, and there
is a wonderful picture of the famous earthquake. The book is a
story of an act of folly, and its heavy penalties, and also the record
of the growth of two characters — one from atheism to reverence,
and the other from a bitter revolt against the world to a wiser
philosophy. The tale is original in scheme and setting, and the
atmosphere and thought of another age are brilliantly reproduced.
No better historical romance has been written in our times.

The Simpkins Plot. George A. Birmingham.

The story tells how a red-haired curate discovers in a harmless lady
novelist, seeking quiet for her1 work, a murderess whose trial had
been a cause cilibre. He forms a scheme of marrying the lady to
the local bore, in the hope that she may end his career. Once
started on the wrong tack, he works out his evidence with con-
vincing logic, and ties up the whole neighbourhood in the toils of
his misconception. The book is full of the wittiest dialogue and the
most farcical situations. It will be as certain to please all lovers of
Irish humour as the immortal " Experiences of an Irish R. M."

Sampson Rideout, Quaker. Una L. Silberrad.

Miss Silberrad's work has of recent years grown rapidly in reputa-
tion, and her new novel is one of the best historical romances of the
day. It is the story of the love of a Quaker manufacturer for a
great lady. The scene is laid in the Wiltshire downs, in Stuart
times, and the atmosphere of the age and place is reproduced with
extraordinary fidelity and charm. The book is primarily a study of
a man and a woman both exceptionally endowed in mind and
character, who, starting from the opposite sides of life, meet on
the ground of a common goodness.
VII

Adventure. Jack London.

This novel is the fruit of Mr. Jack London's recent experiences in
the South Seas — experiences more full of wonder and peril than any
romance. It is the story of a young English planter on a lonely
island, and an American girl who appears suddenly from nowhere
and becomes his business partner. The book does not belie its
name : adventure is of the very essence of the lives of this man and
woman, and the love story which crowns the tale is no less adven-
turous and original than the rest. Mr. London writes of strange
places with the vividness and realism of one who himself has dared
and seen most things.

"&§

*§*

THOMAS NELSON AND SONS,
London, Edinburgh, Dublin, and New York.

THE

NELSON LIBRARY

OF COPYRIGHT FICTION.

Price Sevenpence net.

FORTHCOMING VOLUMES.
THE GOOD COMRADE. Una L. Silberrad.

In this charming story Miss Silberrad breaks fresh
ground. It is a tale of the bulb-growers of Holland
and of English provincial life. It is, above all, the
study of a heroic woman, done with all Miss Silberrad's
subtlety and truth. (April 19.)

MULTITUDE AND SOLITUDE. John Masefield.
It is the story of a man of letters who is disappointed
with his craft and yearns for some more active career.
He finds it in a campaign against sleeping sickness in
Africa. The grimness and realism of the African chap-
ters have not been surpassed in modern literature.
" Multitude and Solitude " is a type of the new romance,
which is at once philosophical and dramatic. (May 3.)

THE GIFT. S. Macnaughtan.

(Author of " The Fortune of Christina M'Nab.")
In this story, as in " Selah Harrison," Miss Macnaughtan
gives us a study in religious temperament. In "The
Gift," however, she is concerned with the development
of a woman's soul. The delicacy and subtlety of the
treatment is as remarkable as the touches of delightful
comedy which no work by Miss Macnaughtan can
ever lack. (May 17.)

ALREADY ISSUED.

THE HOUSE OF A THOUSAND CANDLES.

Meredith Nicholson.
This novel, which has had an enormous vogue in the
United States, is a good example of a new school of
American fiction, in which the wildest romance is
brought into commonplace modern life. The hero,
by an uncle's will, succeeds to a strange house in the
Western States, where he is bound to live for a certain
period of time. The meaning of this condition, and
the surprising adventures which befall him, are told in
the book. It is a story to which the term " breathless "
may well be applied; but rapid and startling as the
incidents are, they are never crude or unconvincing.
Taken along with "The War of the Carolinas," in
Nelson's Sevenpenny Library, it gives an excellent
example of the two sides of Mr. Nicholson's talent.

VIXEN. Miss Braddon.

" Vixen " is probably the second most famous of Miss
Braddon's works, and the publishers are glad to be
able to give it as a successor to " Lady Audley's Secret."
Miss Braddon has had many imitators, but none have
excelled her in her power of vivid and straightforward
narrative.

GOTTY AND THE GUVNOR. A. Copping.
Mr. Copping's book is the story of a Southend fisher-
man, who acts as skipper of the writer's little yacht.
Gotty is a great creation — simple, humorous, practical,
and loyal — with a hint of Mr. W. W. Jacobs's heroes,
but emphatically a type by himself. The story of the
cruise of the yacht will delight all lovers of the sea, and
the final return voyage from Devonshire in a furious gale
is as dramatic an episode as modern sea fiction can show.
x

THE DOLLY DIALOGUES. Anthony Hope.

This is the book which, when first published, made
Mr. Anthony Hope's reputation as a writer of social
comedies. Dolly, Lady Mickleham, is the first of the
witty and irresponsible ladies who for the last decade
have enlivened English fiction. She is also by far the
best, and the gravest reader is captivated by the grace
and humour of the Dialogues.

WHEN VALMOND CAME TO PONTIAC.

Sir Gilbert Parker.
In this charming story Sir Gilbert Parker tells of the
fortunes of a young adventurer in Canada in the early
nineteenth century who claimed to be the son of the
great Napoleon. The mystery of his life and his tragic
death make up one of the most original and moving of
recent romances. The author does for Quebec what in
other works he has done for the Western and Northern
wilds — he interprets to the world its essential romance.

THE GENTLEMAN FROM INDIANA.

Booth Tarkington.
In this book the author of " Monsieur Beaucaire " tells
a story of his own country. "The Gentleman from
Indiana " is a tale of a young university graduate who
becomes a newspaper owner and editor in a Western
town, and wages war against "graft" and corruption.
His crusade brings him into relations with the girl who
had captured his heart at college, and their love story
is subtly interwoven with his political campaign. It is
one of the best of modern American novels, and readers
will delight not only in the stirring drama of the plot,
but in the fresh and sympathetic pictures given of the
young townships of the West.

THE NELSON LIBRARY.

Price Sevenpence net.

CONDENSED LIST.
Arranged alphabetically under Authors' Names.

BAILEY, H. C.— Springtime ; Beaujeu.
BELLOC, H.— Mr. Clutterbuck's Elec-
tion.
BENSON, E. F.— The Princess Sophia.
BRADDON, Miss. — Lady Audley's

Secret ; Vixen.
BRAMAH, E.— Secret of the League.
BURNETT, Mrs. F. H.— Making of a

Marchioness.

CAINE, HALI A Son of Hagar.

CASTLE, A. and E.— French Nan ; If

Youth but Knew ; Incomparable

Bellairs.
CHILDERS, E.— Riddle of the Sands.
CLIFFORD, Mrs. W. K. — Woodside

Farm.
CONRAD, J., and F. M. HUEFFER.—

Romance.
COPPING, A.-Gottyand the Guv'nor.
DOUGLAS, G.— House with the Green

Shutters.
DUNCAN, S. J.— His Honor and a

Lady ; Set in Authority.
FALKNER, J, M.— Moonfleet.
FORREST, R. E.— Eight Days.
FRANCIS, M. E.— Duenna of a Genius.
FUTRELLE, J.— Lady in the Case;

Professor on the Case.
GISSING, G.— Born in Exile; Odd

Women.
HARRADEN, B.— Katharine Frensham.
HOBBES, J. O.— Love and the Soul

Hunters.
HOPE, A.— Count Antonio ; God in the

Car ; Intrusions of Peggy ; King's

Mirror; Quisante; The Dolly

Dialogues.
HORNUNG. E. W— Raffles.
HYNE, C. J. CUTCLIFFE.— Recipe for

Diamonds ; Thompson's Progress.
JACOBS, W. W.— Lady of the Barge ;

Skipper's Wooing.
JAMES, H.— The American.
LONDON, J. -White Fang.
LORIMER, G. H.— Old Gorgon Graham.
MACNAUGHTAN, S.— Expensive Miss

Du Cane ; Fortune of Christina

M'Nab; A Lame Dog's Diary;

Selah Harrison.

MALET, L.— Gateless Barrier ; Wages of

Sin.
MASEFIELD, J.— Captain Margaret.
MASON, A. E. W.— Clementina.
MERRICK, I Call from the Past;

House of Lynch.
NICHOLSON.M.— WaroftheCarolinas;

House of a Thousand Candles.
NORRIS, F.— The Octopus ; The Pit ;

Shanghaied.
NORRIS, W. E.— Clarissa Furiosa ; His

Grace ; Matthew Austen.
OLIPHANT, Mrs.— Primrose Path.
OLLIVANT, A.— Owd Bob.
PAIN, B.— The One Before.
PARKER, Sir G.— An Adventurer of

the North ; Battle of the Strong ;

Translation of a Savage ; When

Valmond came to Pontiac.
PASTURE, Mrs. H. DE LA.— Grey

Knight ; Lonely Lady of Grosvenor

Square ; Man from America.
PHILL POTTS, E.— American Prisoner ;

Farm of the Dagger.
"Q." — Major Vigoureux; Shining Ferry;

Sir John Constantine.
RIDGE, PETT.— Mrs. Galer's Business.
SEDGWICK, Miss A. D.-Valerie Upion.
SIDGWICK, Mrs. A.— Cousin Ivo ;

Cynthia's Way.
STEEL, F. A.— Hosts of the Lord.
TARKINGTON, B.— Gentleman from

Indiana ; Monsieur Beaucaire, and

The Beautiful Lady.
VACHELL, H. A.— John Charity ; The

Waters of Jordan.
WARD, Mrs. H— History of David

Grieve; Lady Rose's Daughter;

Marcella; Marriage of William

Ashe ; Robert Elsmere ; Sir George

Tressady.
WELLS, H. G.— First Men in the Moon;

Food of the Gods ; Invisible Man ;

Kipps; Love and Mr. Lewisham;

Sleeper Awakes.
WHITE, S. E.— Biased Trail.
WHITEING, R.— No. 5 John Street.
WILLIAMSON, C. N. and A. M.— Love

and the Spy ; Princess Passes.

T. NELSON & SONS, London, Edinburgh, Dublin, and New York.